deafness and Gfieerfufness 



J3y (7. CO. Jackson 




Copyright^ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



Deafness 



Cheerfulness 



DEAFNESS 



AND 



CHEERFULNESS 



By 
A. W. JACKSON, A.M. 

Author of 
' James Martineau : A Biography and Study ' 



I 



Boston 

Little, Brown, and Company 

1901 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUN. 25 1901 

Copyright entry 
CLASS O^XXc. N». 

/ zo-zy 

COPY B, 






Copyright, iqoi, 
By A. W. Jackson 



UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON 
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 



To 
CLARENCE J. BLAKE 

My " Beloved Physician" 



C onten ts 

Page 

I. A Prefatory Word 3 

II. Unconscious Deafness 9 

III. Early Experience of Deafness ... 17 

IV. Social Afflictions 37 

V. Business Embarrassments 6j 

VI. The Pathos of Deafness 91 

VII. Helps and Consolations of Deafness . 127 

VIII. Higher Consolations 175 



A PREFATORY WORD 



DEAFNESS & 

CHEERFULNESS 



I 



I 

A Prefatory Word 

HAVE a mind to write to my fellow- 
sufferers, the deaf. Some may think 
it dubious enterprise to turn infirmity into 
literature ; and they may fling in my face 
the dictum of Emerson, " Beware how you 
unmuzzle a valetudinarian. ,, And it may 
well be confessed that were it to become the 
vogue of letters to deal with the ills that 
flesh is heir to, the result could not be a 
happy one. Think of the books that would 
be thrust upon us : " To my Consumptive 
Friend," "The Consolations of Liv^er Com- 
plaint," " Reveries of a Dyspeptic." Physi- 
cians would be cross-examined and hospital 
records would be explored for the telling 
illustration of the chosen malady. In our 
reading hours we should have constantly to 
3 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

do with the nurse and the doctor ; our liter- 
ary acquaintances would be men and women 
of the bent form, the sunken eye, the hollow 
cheek, the saffron hue. All of which I say 
in order to say that not even to the extent 
of this slight volume would I offend in this 
direction. The noblest dealing with mis- 
fortune is in manly silence to bear it ; the 
next to the meanest is in feebleness to weep 
over it ; the wholly unpardonable is to ask 
others to weep also. And I should feel that 
I was committing this unpardonable sin if 
I were to write of deafness simply to make 
literature of its sufferings. 

The purpose, indeed, for which I address 
my fellow-sufferers is to brace them, cheer 
them, reconcile them. I aim not to tell a 
tale or to paint a picture, but to preach a 
sermon. To be sure, it will be an extremely 
unconventional sermon, somewhat of the 
nature of a prayer-meeting experience sup- 
plemented with an exhortation. From long 
experience of deafness, I cannot doubt that 
I know the outer sufferings, the inner griefs, 
of those who are smitten with it ; and though 
4 



A Prefatory Word 



I may not have followed, I am sure I have 
seen, and can trust myself to point out, the 
way of wisdom in dealing with it. For a 
very great number of the incurably deaf the 
chief help is in a large sense moral, and with 
this I would reach them. I shall indulge 
little in pity, — that I reserve for children, 
not proffer men ; but I shall appeal to cour- 
age and faith and fortitude. The experience 
of the deaf is hard, far harder than any but 
a fellow-sufferer can know ; I would bear in 
upon them the thought once borne in upon 
me by a beloved physician : " This is bad, 
very bad indeed, and not unlikely it will 
become worse ; but has the thought occurred 
to you that it is a very poor bushel under 
which to hide your candle ? " 

And one thing more will be undertaken 
in these pages. The deaf have not only 
griefs, but also grievances ; they suffer di- 
rectly from their infirmity, and scarcely less 
from the treatment of those about them. 
This treatment, however mistaken, is almost 
never the offspring of unkindly purpose ; 
yet no innocence of intent quite neutralizes 
5 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

its pang. Accordingly, while speaking to 
the deaf I shall also speak for them. Shift- 
ing here and there the point of view, I shall 
seek to show to those who meet them in 
their walk the way of dealing that shall spare 
them wounds and shed a brightness on their 
path. 



II 

UNCONSCIOUS DEAFNESS 



II 

Unconscious Deafness 

I ONCE asked an aurist of wide expe- 
rience what proportion of an average 
community he would expect to find deaf. 
His prompt answer was, cc More than sixty 
per cent." This was startling information, 
and my surprise drew from him this expla- 
nation: "We judge from different standards. 
Your deaf people are those who are notice- 
ably deaf; mine are those whose hearing, 
as proved by my tests, is below normal. 
Now nature has given us more than twice 
the hearing capacity needed in the ordinary 
contacts of life ; so that, as a rule, one must 
lose more than half his hearing before he is 
conscious of the loss of any. My tests, 
however, make plain the earlier stages of the 
bad way, and justify my conclusion that 
those with less than normal hearing are the 
majority, not the few." 
9 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

Further conversation brought out certain 
facts, the prevailing ignorance of which 
should, if possible, be dissipated. Perhaps 
the majority of mankind are deaf but do not 
know it. It is the good fortune of many 
never to know it. The infirmity creeps on 
so slowly that a full life is lived ere it reaches 
the stage of conscious disability. Yet there 
it is, slowly and insidiously progressing, and 
gaining ever and ever a hold that is more 
unrelenting. To be sure there are forms of 
deafness of which such is not the history; — 
hearing may be almost at once destroyed by 
disease or accident. In a majority of cases, 
however, there is a considerable period of 
years between the beginning of deafness and 
its manifestation in imperfect hearing. It 
creeps on, a slow-footed fate, but makes no 
sign. When at length the patient consults 
an aurist, he thinks he has a slight deafness, 
which he hopes may be easily and speedily 
remedied ; whereas the sad truth is that his 
hearing is more than half destroyed, and his 
malady is past remedy because from long 
standing it has become organic, 

IO 



Unconscious Deafness 



These are very serious facts, and there are 
practical reasons why they should be more 
generally known. First, there is possible 
injustice that may result from ignorance of 
them. I have in mind an illustrative in- 
stance ; the reader in casting about may very 
likely find others. There is a man living 
whom this country owes a considerable sum, 
which it is not probable that either he or his 
heirs will ever receive. He gave her four 
years of faithful and arduous service during 
the terrible struggle of the Civil War. Soon 
after his return home deafness came upon 
him, at first very slight and for some time 
remaining so. At length, however, it grew 
worse, and in time drove him from all lucra- 
tive employment. As his case under the 
diagnosis of experts pointed clearly back to 
his military experience, he made application 
for a pension. His case was clearly pen- 
sionable in the intent of the pension law, 
and simple justice plead earnestly in his 
favor. His affidavit, however, showed that 
he was not made aware of his deafness until 
three weeks after leaving the army. The 
ii 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

reviewer of his papers at Washington may 
not have been a practical farmer ; yet had 
he been shown a field of wheat ready for 
the harvest, it would probably have been 
difficult to convince him that the seed had 
been sown within the period of three weeks. 
But he had not the wit to see that this deaf- 
ness when it became apparent to the sufferer 
must have had existence for a period during 
which more than one wheat crop might have 
been matured; and the ground was taken 
that because the ex-soldier did not know of 
his deafness until three weeks after leaving 
the military service there was no proof that 
it was incurred there. From a conviction 
that this decision must have been an official 
blunder, a second application was made, and 
the pension was a second time refused on 
the same ground. The ex-soldier lost his 
pension in consideration of those three weeks, 
which to a properly instructed official could 
have counted for nothing at all. Pension was 
given him several years later by special act of 
Congress ; but there are the previous unpen- 
sioned years, the rightful due of which is his 

12 



Unconscious Deafness 



costly charge for official inability to see that un- 
conscious deafness must often be, and in this 
case must have been, a prelude to conscious. 
Secondly, there is a possible protection 
from a most insidious peril, — not a royal 
one, but a very real one, — which a knowl- 
edge of these facts brings home to us. Of 
a hundred people whom I may meet in a 
morning, not one may be as deaf as I am ; 
but, as I often reflect, more than half of 
them have entered upon the way that leads 
to my unenviable distinction. They do not 
suspect it, and so from fancied security take 
no precaution. Yet precaution not only 
could be taken, but would be in accord with 
our conduct in other relations where pos- 
sible loss is intrinsically less grievous and its 
liability less exigent. Thus we insure our 
houses, our furniture, our merchandise, pro- 
viding against a contingency which to the 
average of human experience is very im- 
probable. Many keep regular appointment 
with a dentist, paying him often for simply 
telling them that they have no need of him, 
but to the end that he may discover in 
13 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

season the condition that shall demand his 
skill. And why not in like manner insure 
our hearing by an occasional consultation 
with an aurist, paying him, we will say, a 
biennial visit? Time after time he may 
declare the hearing perfect; but there may 
come a time when he will report an incipient 
malady, and prescribe a remedy while the 
case is yet remedial. We shall do thus when 
the significance of the aurist's testimony is 
practically taken home. Such insurance 
might cost us in the period of thirty years 
an aggregate sum of seventy-five dollars, — 
certainly a cheap outlay for protection against 
a malady so insidious and so grave. To 
many there is something irksome in the 
thought of thus keeping watch over them- 
selves. It has its analogy, however, in the 
night by night locking of the door against 
the thief that has never come ; in the police 
we set to patrol our city streets that the 
burglar may not circumvent us or the ruffian 
assault us ; in the board of health which are 
given authority over us that they may hold 
the epidemic away from us. 
H 



Ill 

EARLY EXPERIENCE OF 
DEAFNESS 



is 



Ill 

Early Experience of Deafness 

WHETHER or not unconscious deaf- 
ness is attended with peculiar physical 
or mental experiences I cannot say. Look- 
ing back upon my history, I am inclined to 
think it may be ; but in calling up the dis- 
tant past it is hardly safe to connect re- 
membered moods with a condition that 
at the time was hidden and unsuspected. 
When deafness reaches the conscious stage, 
however, — has ceased, that is, to be hidden 
and has become obtrusive, — then experiences 
begin of which deepening years are but 
the lengthened tale. I suppose that most 
at first resent the suggestion that they are 
growing deaf. I did so ; indeed it was 
several months after others began to remark 
upon my deafness before I could realize my 
altered status with the world ; and then not 
from what people told me, or even from my 

2. 17 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

inability to hear them, but from certain tri- 
fling but suggestive incidents. I sat read- 
ing one morning, when all at once I missed 
the companionable tick of the clock. My 
first thought was that it had stopped. I 
looked up ; the position of the hands sug- 
gested no loss of time. I looked more 
closely ; the pendulum was swinging as 
usual. I looked out upon the town-clock 
in a near steeple ; the two marked the hour 
alike or nearly so. The truth came home 
almost as a blow that staggered me : it was 
I that had stopped. It was, however, in con- 
tact with outward nature that the scope of 
my loss was most vividly borne in upon me. 
One morning I was early out of doors. It 
was late in May, and the birds on the lawn 
and in tree and bush were holding carnival. 
For a little time I watched them, when all 
at once it occurred to me that I did not 
hear them. Could it be that they were not 
singing ? A robin alighted on the lawn a 
little distance away. He lifted up his beak ; 
I was quite sure I saw a familiar movement 
of his throat ; but no note came to me. I 
18 



Early Experience of Deafness 

turned into my home reflecting, " I shall 
never hear the birds again as I have heard 
them." Another day I was standing beside 
a little river near my home. It flowed in 
its usual curves, it rippled over stones as 
was its wont ; but to me it was a silent 
river : it glided past me but spoke not, nor 
ever after would speak to me. At another 
time I was standing in a pine grove in the 
season of the year 

" When the pine tosses its cones." 

The cones indeed were lying around me. I 
looked up; the breeze was swaying the 
branches, but 

" The song of its waterfall tones ' ' 

was not borne down to me. At yet another 
time I drew up my curtain early one morn- 
ing and was surprised to find it raining 
heavily. From childhood the sound of fall- 
ing rain had been peculiarly pleasant to me ; 
but now I discovered that the 

" Drip-drop, drip-drop, over the eaves, 
And drip-drop over the sycamore leaves," 

was no longer for me. 
19 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

Thus through a few simple incidents 
was my changed estate made plain to me. 
There was still for me the thunder's crash, 
the tempest's roar, the cataract's plunge ; 
but, aside from these and the like heavier 
noises, I must henceforth live in a sound- 
less world. I remember reading about this 
time Krummacher's dialogue between Adam 
and Eloah, his attendant angel, and seeing 
in it a suggestion of myself though taken 
in reverse. It is the evening of the first 
day, and the young Adam notes with anxiety 
the deepening twilight. In some things he 
was not as well instructed as I ; at any rate, 
as shown in the pleasant story, he did not 
know that a sensation the less does not 
mean a reality extinguished. So he asks of 
his angel if the young creation will go> swal- 
lowed up in Old Night. I had no suspicion 
that sound had gone, swallowed up in Old 
Silence ; I had not a passing doubt but that 
to other ears the birds warbled, and the 
river laughed, and the raindrops pattered, 
and the pine-trees moaned; it was I that 
had gone. 

20 



Early Experience of Deafness 

I write thus of myself, well assured that I 
tell in substance the experience of the great 
multitude of my fellow sufferers. Now I 
would not magnify this experience unduly ; 
there are sorrows everywhere in comparison 
with which it is entitled to no mention. Yet 
he is strangely wanting in sensibility who 
can take it home with cheerful spirit. He 
need not be rebellious, but he can hardly be 
less than pensive and regretful. To the 
ordinary sounds of nature he is dead. In 
his world leaves cannot rustle, or doves coo, 
or insects hum. Tree, air, bird, river, which 
before would converse with him in any soli- 
tude, now speak to no purpose. Before him 
the vast drama goes on, but it is only acted. 
A histrionic, but no voice is there. 

The significance of this loss intensifies 
as we contemplate it more. The pleasure 
of sound in nature, because of its very 
constancy, is hardly to be appreciated until 
it is lost. We fail to note it because it is so 
normal. The usual commiseration of deaf- 
ness goes no further than the disadvantage it 
occasions in the necessary communications 

21 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

of life ; just as of blindness, that it makes 
impossible the direction of one's hands in 
their tasks, of one's feet in their walk. 
These practical disadvantages are indeed 
serious and obtrusive, but in either case the 
measure of deprivation reaches far beyond 
them. Beyond the use of eyes in distin- 
guishing objects is the simple joy of light; 
and we give no due estimate of the blind 
man's griefs till we take reckoning of this. 
It was of this that Milton was thinking 
when he wrote in Samson Agonistes : 

t€ O first-created beam, and thou great Word, 
* Let there be light, and light was over all,' 
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree ? 
The Sun to me is dark 
And silent as the Moon, 
When she deserts the night, 
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 
Since light so necessary is to life, 
And almost life itself, if it be true 
That light is in the soul, 
She all in every part, why was the sight 
To such a tender ball as the eye confined, 
So obvious and so easy to be quenched, 
And not, as feeling, through all parts diffused 
That she might look at will through every pore ? ' ' 

22 



Early Experience of Deafness 

Similarly there is a joy in sound. We may 
often seek silence as distinguished from 
noise ; but silence as distinguished from 
sound is another matter. Breaking from 
the din of business or the strife of tongues, 
how often do men find in the sounds of 
nature their rest and solace ! For the 
sounds of nature, barring the harsher ones, 
are sweet sounds. Plato would reward 
victorious souls with the delights of spheral 
harmony ; nature proffers to attentive ears 
a terrestrial equivalent of this. Nature's 
sounds, indeed, in our right adjustment to 
them, are very near to music. Our walk 
is appointed to us in a world of melody. 
There is proof of this in the effect which 
any dissonant sound may have upon us. 
The ear is offended by it, a fact that shows 
that such sound is unnatural to it, — a 
disturbance, that is, of the condition to 
which it is adapted, and which is all but 
constant. Even harsher sounds, cast upon 
the atmosphere, seem in a little time to 
have the harshness washed out of them. 
Emerson, whose observations of nature were 
23 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

as accurate as his metaphysic was keen, 
noticed this, and wrote of it in lines which 
there can be no mistake in quoting: 

'* None can tell how sweet, 

How virtuous, the morning air ; 

Every accent vibrates well ; 

Not alone the wood- bird's call, 

Or shouting boys that chase their ball, 

Pass the height of minstrel skill, 

But the ploughman's thoughtless cry, 

Lowing oxen, sheep that bleat, 

And the joiner's hammer-beat, 

Softened are above their will, 

Take tones from groves they wandered through 

Or flutes the passing angels blew. 

All grating discords melt, 

No dissonant note is dealt, 

And though thy voice be shrill 

Like rasping file on steel, 

Such is the temper of the air, 

Echo waits with art and care, 

And will the faults of song repair." 

And the deep truth conveyed here, he that 
hath ears may verify if he will. The roar 
of Niagara is certainly overpowering to one 
who observes the plunge from the bridge 
below or the cliff beside it ; but at the 
distance of a mile or two — 
24 



Early Experience of Deafness 

t€ The artful Air will separate 

Note by note all sounds that grate, 
Smothering in her ample breast 
All but godlike words, 
Reporting to the happy ear 
Only purified accords." 

The crowing of a cock under your window 
may not be a pleasant sound, but it is not 
without melody as it comes from a distant 
farm-yard. The croak of frogs may grate 
harshly if very near, but at a little distance 
it is a lullaby to go to sleep upon. The 
cow has no fame even in poetry as a 
musician, yet her moo as borne to us from 
her pasture is musical. The thunder's peal 
may startle and terrify if it comes from just 
above you ; but borne to you from the 
distant sky, it seems the rolling bass of 
" heaven's deep organ." Emerson tells in 
the poem we have quoted how the Indian 
is daunted by soft music which is "wrought 
from barking waves," and how in the 
scream of the panther in the wild the child 
may hear " convent-chanting." The farmer's 
wife very likely is no prima donna, and her 
25 



Deafness and Cheerfulness - f 

voice is sharp and shrill as she flings it 
across the fields in her noonday call to him ; 
but its tone is not unworthy of Nilsson 
when it reaches him. The truth is that 
the very element by which sound is con- 
veyed to us is charged with the further 
office of cleansing it of discord that it may 
come pure and pleasant to our ears. This, 
however, is of no purpose to|the deaf man. 
With the sound he loses the music too ; and 
so when he wakes to the consciousness of 
his loss it is with a sense of bereavement 
of which language can scarcely tell. He 
realizes that not only is a faculty destroyed, 
but that also an ever haunting joy has de- 
parted. There is within him a chord that 
responds to a harmony, but he has been 
banished to another realm where that har- 
mony is not for him. 

Only the half, however, has as yet been 
told. While the status with nature is thus 
changing, the status with men is undergoing 
a similar change. The finer chords of na- 
ture are lost, but the discords of the human 
voice are unhappily in evidence. Few speak 
26 



Early Experience of Deafness 

to the deaf man in pleasant tones, I well 
remember the impression that my wife was 
becoming very peremptory with me. Her 
requests seemed orders ; her invitations were 
suggestive of commands. On her lips might 
be smiles, but there was severity between 
them. The people whom I met on the 
street seemed impatient with me. The 
grocer with whom I traded weighed and 
measured as usual, but a familiar geniality 
had gone out of his voice. The express- 
man did my errands, but he spoke roughly. 
The hostler was obliging in conduct, but his 
few and proper words came harshly to my 
ears. It seemed as if sympathy and kindli- 
ness had gone out of human tones, as for 
me, indeed, they had. 

Of course this apparent harshness was due 
to a strained and unnatural use of the voice 
in the effort to make me hear. The old 
kindness was there, but the tones belied it. 
The tenderer emotions were as they had 
been, or perhaps enhanced by my evident 
misfortune ; but the instrument that con- 
veyed them was out of tune. 
27 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

Such was my experience, the experience 
of so many others with difference of detail. 
And through this experience it was at length 
borne in upon me, that as the finer voices of 
nature so the tenderer and sweeter human 
tones were no more for me ; that save in 
exceptional instances there were for me only 
the rasping discords which an unnatural ut- 
terance is sure to bring forth. Does any 
one think this no serious matter? It is per- 
mitted him to experiment for a time, to 
suppress the gentler qualities of tone, and 
observe the practical effect. Try this sup- 
pression in invitation to a child, and see 
whether he will come to you or run away 
from you. Try it with the sorrowing, and 
note how far you succeed in comforting 
them. Try it with one in the heat of pas- 
sion, and see whether you call him back to 
reason or intensify his frenzy. Let the 
young man try it in his tale of love, and 
note in which direction it will move a 
maiden's hesitating will. Try it for a time 
in the household ; let wife speak to husband 
or husband to wife in such quality of tone as 
28 



Early Experience of Deafness 

the deaf habitually hear, and note its effect 
upon domestic peace. Perhaps imagination, 
without the aid of experiment, may suffi- 
ciently realize the consequence. The truth 
is that in these human tones are the solace 
and the madness of the world ; and to be 
shut out from the melody that gladdens and 
given wholly over to the discord that grates 
may be an endurable but it is certainly no 
easy fate. It has been a matter of wonder 
to me, considering the significance of human 
tones, how they may please or how they 
may irritate, that so little space is given 
them in our popular education. Surely in 
the ordinary way of life a pleasant voice is of 
more value than much arithmetic and all 
algebra, and many other things which we 
qualify our children to forget. If one has 
some capacity for song, the master's careful 
training may be sought ; otherwise the cul- 
tivation of the voice, which I suppose 
should always be on the principles of music, 
is almost sure to be left to neglect. So elite 
young gentlemen speak in tones that remind 
us of the raven's croak ; and young women 
29 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

who surpass all birds in their plumage are 
suggestive of magpies when they talk. For- 
tunately the human voice is an instrument 
of such quality that only in its unnatural 
use (unhappily so common) can it be un- 
pleasant ; so the aim of musical training is 
to develop, not transform : to make its 
sweetness more prevailing, to increase its 
flexibility, to enlarge its range and add to 
its carrying power. I specify carrying 
power, for musical voices, as the deaf are 
sure to know, are ever the ones best heard. 
Now and then, at distant intervals, I meet 
one who for a little time beguiles me from 
the consciousness of my deprivation ; and 
with rare exceptions they are always those 
whose tones have the clearness and strength 
and sweetness which song exacts and im- 
parts. I have in mind such an one, a 
woman of musically trained voice, who will 
sometimes sit beside me, and though my 
trumpet is unpoised, with no seeming effort 
on her part, penetrate my dull ears with her 
melodious intonations. It is quiet conversa- 
tion upon every-day themes, but her pure, 
30 



Early Experience of Deafness 

clear tones can be hardly less to me than 
Patti's song to her. They come to me, too, 
as a happy reminiscence of the time when 
the intonations of untrained voices were 
my unappreciated because daily joy. 

There is another feature of the deaf man's 
case : under most forms of his affliction his 
head is full of noises. These are difficult to 
explain, but they are constant and irremedi- 
able. They are apt to be very varied, — 
the sing of mosquitoes, the hum of bees, 
the whistle of a locomotive, spiritual rap- 
pings, the wail of wind, the roll of water. 
They are aggravated by fatigue or illness, 
more endurable in better hours, but never 
still. Sometimes, after long listening, or a 
period of wakefulness, these many noises 
may come in unison, as if the imps were 
out, or rather in, upon a serenade. To 
most they are a distraction and a misery ; — 
there are men in our insane asylums because 
of them. I say to most, for there are those 
who do not greatly mind them ; and one I 
have known who, able to hear scarcely any- 
thing else, found a measure of comfort in 
31 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

listening to them. Such a one should be 
able to say amen to Emerson, when he 
teaches that hell itself is not without its 
extreme satisfactions. 

Thus I found myself, and thus for long 
years have continued, shut out from the 
harmonies of nature and the finer and dearer 
human harmonies, shut up with these dis- 
tracting noises. I look back upon this ex- 
perience without repining, but I cannot say 
that it has been easy. I — may my frequent 
use of this pronoun be pardoned. It is only 
for literary convenience that I thus use it, 
drawing from my own experience, fellow 
sufferer, that I may exhibit yours. It is a 
grievous affliction ; but 

t€ It fortifies my heart to know 
That though I perish truth is so, " — 

an attitude of mind which we may widely 
extend and take home to our spiritual heal- 
ing. The harmonies of nature are not for 
you, but they still are. They are a heaven 
which you are shut out from, but in whose 
rich joy the great multitude of your kind 
32 



Early Experience of Deafness 

partake. The air that beats upon you is 
charged with vibrations that carry to other 
ears a ceaseless melody. The brook still 
laughs, the wind quires, the insects hum, the 
birds are songful, the daughter's glee is mu- 
sical, the husband's bass is tender, the wife 
puts smiles into her tones. — Only your 
tympanum is out of order. 



33 



IV 

SOCIAL AFFLICTIONS 



35 



IV 

Social Afflictions 

THUS are the deaf shut out from the 
melodies of nature, and from the hu- 
man voice in its finer and tenderer modu- 
lations. On the one hand is an oppressive 
silence, on the other a rasping discord ; and 
between the two his life must go on. 

But though thus cut off from nature and 
thus deprived of one of the chief charms of 
society, there is a difference in practical rela- 
tion with them which places the burden of 
the far heavier grief upon the human side. 
If the deaf man cannot hear nature's voice, 
he, at least, can walk her paths in peace, and, 
with eye open to her wonders, a joy may 
thrill him as he goes. Clouds and sunsets, 
mountain peaks and the expanse of ocean, 
forest, valley, and winding river, ask only 
eyes and a receptive mind. In his human 
relations, however, he is still husband, father, 
37 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

brother; he bears a hand in business, church, 
philanthropy, politics ; in the accustomed 
highways and by-ways of life he meets his 
kind and communicates with them. There 
is often in him a desire, and in his conduct a 
tendency, to deal with his fellow-men as with 
the beasts of the field and the birds of the 
air, observing what they do but giving no 
heed to what they say. A deaf man whom 
I once knew made himself a shrewd dis- 
cerner of men's minds through close scrutiny 
of their actions while keeping himself out of 
the range of their voices. This, however, 
can only be in a measurable degree ; and 
so, in his necessary efforts to communicate, 
the deaf man must incur manifold griefs of 
which something should be said. 

And first, the manner in which he is 
often spoken to should be given a word. 
It is not difficult to tell in what manner to 
address a deaf man so as to bear in upon 
him the thing that is said with least discom- 
fort to him. It is, however, a lesson which 
many find it very difficult to learn. There 
is an every-day occurrence which very hap- 
38 



Social Afflictions 



pily illustrates. A man approaches a tele- 
phone with intent to speak with one who is 
five hundred miles away. He first draws 
the attention of the one with whom he will 
speak, and then with little more than aver- 
age voice, but with instinctive care as to 
clearness of tone and distinctness of utter- 
ance, speeds his message. I often wish that 
people at the distance of five feet would 
treat me in like manner : first draw my at- 
tention, then with slightly elevated voice, 
but with clearness of tone and distinctness 
of articulation, address me. I might not 
catch the message at the first utterance ; 
indeed I should often fail to. But it is 
simply certain that by no other treatment 
could I be dealt with more successfully. 
Yet people will lay hand on my shoulder, 
and shout into my ear or trumpet as if am- 
bitious to be Stentor and practising at short 
range. Against such treatment, pleading 
for my fellow sufferers as for myself, I re- 
monstrate ; very rarely is it necessary, and 
for most obvious reasons it is unwise. 
First, such treatment is very likely to pro- 
39 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

duce confusion, — in the least sensitive ear 
it is almost sure to produce a nervous 
shock, — and so to defeat the very end it 
is employed to realize. Secondly, it gives 
the deaf man thus addressed a painful sense 
of effort on the part of the one addressing 
him, for which no manifest kindliness of in- 
tention can quite make amends. He may 
have sufficient self-control not to show an- 
noyance, but, closely questioned, he could 
rarely deny himself annoyed. Thirdly, the 
ear is a delicate organ, and the deaf man's is 
often in a peculiarly sensitive condition ; 
and so the shout, especially when into a 
trumpet, is likely to produce a keen and 
searching pain. Fourthly, there is a rude- 
ness in such treatment of which it is hardly 
possible not to be sensible ; and so, while it 
is not sure to help the hearing, it is very apt 
to hurt the temper, and that badly. Give 
your deaf friend credit for a good measure 
of saintliness if he meets this treatment with 
entire serenity. 

It may be suggested that one who is very 
deaf is not in a position to judge as to the 
40 



Social Afflictions 



measure of effort that must be made in ad- 
dressing him, that this can only be deter- 
mined by others in their experiment upon 
him. This demurrer the thoughtful sufferer 
will not attempt to confute ; but he can 
surely tell what treatment distracts and con- 
fuses him, what quality of tone will best 
reach him, and what rude handling adds 
weight to his burden. And here is an in- 
teresting fact which I have often observed, 
and which illustrates what is here main- 
tained : while people not deaf will often 
struggle painfully to communicate with 
those who are, two deaf people, instinct- 
ively adopting the rules of speech given 
above, will quite as often get on very com- 
fortably together. I recall a ludicrous inci- 
dent from my own experience in which this 
is shown. Once at a social gathering I dis- 
covered a deaf woman who seemed to me 
neglected ; so, taking her a little aside, I sat 
down for a chat with her. We were getting 
on very pleasantly together, when at length 
I became aware that we were attracting 
attention. I glanced around, and the host 
41 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

bent over me and shouted into my trumpet, 
" We are wondering how you two deaf people 
can make each other hear without raising 
your voices ! " 

Other social discomforts to the deaf are 
met in habits of conversation to which they 
cannot possibly adapt themselves. Atten- 
tive listening to one who cannot easily hear 
is probably quite as fatiguing as heavy 
porterage to one who is lame; As fatigue 
x increases, too, the head noises also increase 
and at length become intolerable. Yet he 
must deal with those who before all things 
want audience, who insist upon having it, 
and who fancy that they are entertaining 
while they are simply indulging in a pro- 
lixity that is merciless. While he is labor- 
ing to grasp the essential features of the 
story or argument, for this is all that he 
can do, it is leisurely spun out with " As 
I was saying," and "This reminds me," 
and "That recalls," and "You perhaps 
have heard," involutions which he cannot 
grasp and meanderings which are his de- 
spair. I am aware that there are others 
42 



Social Afflictions 



besides the deaf who have a grievance here, 
but to them it is scarcely endurable. The 
hand or trumpet at the ear should always 
admonish to be brief and direct in state- 
ment ; by frugality in speech should the 
labors of the deaf be economized. Yet the 
tortuous monologue goes on ; and the deaf 
listener who was quite brave at the begin- 
ning is in hopeless confusion at the end. 
This experience is not only a very trying 
but also a very common one. And there is 
another habit of conversation, very proper 
with people who have ears to hear, but a 
source of misery to the deaf, — the habit of 
intrusion. I am conversing with a friend, 
we will say, of London ; and he narrates 
a peculiar experience there. All is well 
so far ; I have heard and been interested, 
and wish to carry the conversation further. 
Just as I am about to speak, however, a 
listener throws in an account of a like ex- 
perience which he had in Damietta, and 
straightway these two are by the Nile while 
I am left alone by the Thames. This in- 
truder I have been totally unable to hear; 
43 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

in fact his speech has not been adapted to, 
or even intended for, my ears. He has 
taken my conversation from me, — a thing 
most impolite in itself, only no impolite- 
ness is intended ; and which the deaf, 
though too considerate to resent, will usu- 
ally have the sensibility to feel. As a rule, 
the right of way in conversation is very 
properly forgotten ; one of its chief charms 
is the freedom allowed to any one to come 
into it where he sees an opening. In deal- 
ing with the deaf, however, this right of 
way must be respected as a condition of 
their bearing any part at all. Thus to 
come into their talk is to drive them out 
of it. This species of eviction he may 
look upon as one of the inevitable conse- 
quences of his infirmity ; yet it may be 
well enough to say that to be put sum- 
marily to silence cannot be pleasant. Un- 
pleasant treatment may be smiled upon in 
view of innocence of intention ; but, like 
a mistaken medicine given by a blundering 
physician, it produces its natural effect all 
the same. 

44 



Social Afflictions 



Another source of anxiety with the deaf 
in society is the liability of being laughed 
at. They are almost sure to make blun- 
ders, which to any but the most invincibly 
sympathetic are likely to seem ridiculous ; 
and if politeness restrains the loud guffaw, 
the suppressed titter, which is far worse, 
is almost sure. Many deaf people make 
great effort to bear themselves well in 
society — try, that is, to indemnify for their 
infirmity with special alertness. In order, 
too, not to make their infirmity prominent, 
they resort to such stratagems as their wit 
may suggest, and it would surprise the un- 
knowing could they be shown how many 
and ingenious they may be. Despite their 
best efforts, however, their discomfiture will 
come, and when guffaw or titter greets it 
there is added to the pang of ridicule the 
humiliating sense of failure. By way of 
illustration I will narrate an incident in my 
own experience. I was called to preach 
of a Sunday in a neighboring town. I con- 
ducted two services, and was taken home 
to dine with a member of the congrega- 
45 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

tion. Of course I was very weary, and, 
during the hour before dinner was served, 
my imperative need was rest. My host, 
however, did not understand this, and so 
from a mistaken politeness sat down for 
conversation with me. He was a man who 
had read and thought, and so, as to the 
substance of what he had to say, was inter- 
esting. His guttural tones, however, were 
ill suited to deaf ears, while his faulty utter- 
ance was muffled by a moustache, — a vanity 
which I have come to reproach in every- 
body else, though an adornment to which 
I hold fast myself. I rallied to the emer- 
gency, stole the lead in conversation where 
I could, made long explanations and told 
long stories, — specimens of the stratagems 
just referred to and illustration of the habit 
of talk that has been mildly reprobated. 
Thus I held my own without disaster till 
the dinner was called. Here, however, 
other trials were awaiting me. There were 
two or three guests from the village, and 
they must have their word with me ; and 
there was the hostess whose turn had come. 
46 



Social Afflictions 



She was one of those fair creatures, met 
so often in New England homes, who can 
read Emerson and cook a dinner, and serve 
either with the sweeter grace because she 
at the same time serves the other. Her 
voice, however, had apparently been formed 
by crooning lullabies, soft and gentle but 
with scarce any of the penetrating power 
to dull ears so essential. She baffled all 
my endeavors to get the lead in conversa- 
tion ; she had a fund of stories which she 
leisurely told, and took delight in long and 
detailed explanations. I rallied my waning 
powers, gave closest attention, guessed at 
what I did not hear, and smiled when others 
smiled; and thus got on quite safely for 
a time. At length, however, my disaster 
came. In an effort to take something from 
her lips I hopelessly blundered, and a noisy 
laugh all round the board was the conse- 
quence. Now I am so made that being 
laughed at for blunders that my infirmity 
makes inevitable is no serious affliction. 
When others laugh I can usually laugh 
too; and I have sometimes a knack of 
47 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

making reprisals, in which I take an unre- 
generate delight. But probably the great 
majority of the deaf in my place would 
have been simply miserable. Multitudes 
can bear the consciousness of guilt quite 
as easily as the consciousness that they 
have been ridiculous ; and a sense of de- 
feat is agreeable to nobody. I do not 
justify this sensitiveness and I plead with 
my fellow sufferers to rise above it. I 
can, however, understand it ; and I know 
from the confessions of not a few that, 
in consequence of such treatment, social 
relations, save on the most restricted scale, 
are very often found almost intolerable. 
They may take rebuff too seriously, but 
there is certainly rebuff that they have 
to take. And while I would urge my fel- 
low sufferers so far as possible to throw off 
this sensitiveness, I would also labor with 
society. Though this treatment did not 
cost me even a passing pang, I suspect 
that it could hardly be justified by any 
standard of polite behavior. Is not polite 
behavior always that which wins and en- 
48 



Social Afflictions 



courages and comforts ? If from weakness 
of limb I had tripped and fallen, they would 
have hastened to help me up, with sympa- 
thetic and anxious inquiries as to my hurt ; 
but as it was my ears that failed, they 
laughed at me. The ordinary solicitude 
as to a fall may be exaggerated, but it is 
beautiful ; to meet the tripping of the deaf 
with a decorous sympathy were no less so ; 
and, in the majority of cases, it is as ear- 
nestly called for. In the one case you com- 
fort a hurt, in the other you spare a pang. 
Bruises may be hard to bear, but who will 
say that mortifications are less so ? 

The grief, however, that more than any 
other afflicts the deaf springs from the neg- 
lect and impatience which they experience 
from those about them. Of this treatment 
I make no personal complaint; nay more, 
I see reason for it and can extenuate it ; but 
it is real. First, neglect. Unless my ob- 
servation is badly at fault, very excellent 
people are likely to reduce social intimacies 
to low terms, if not the lowest, in dealing 
with a deaf neighbor ; indeed, while I mark 
4 49 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

very pleasant exceptions to the rule, this is 
very clearly the rule. Such intimacies, too, 
as are proffered or encouraged are likely to 
seem perfunctory rather than glad. As the 
deaf man walks abroad he meets those whom 
he respects, and by whom he may believe 
himself respected; but there is something in 
the formal courtesy that forbids him to seek 
more. Others walk together and are mani- 
festly willing to leave him to walk alone. 
Even in the inner circle of those nearest 
them, those deaf are peculiarly fortunate 
who are not made to feel that their infirmity 
is a barrier to intercourse which even affec- 
tion hesitates to force. Again let me urge 
that I am stating facts, not punishing slights. 
Now the deaf I suppose to be on the 
whole as reasonable as other people; and 
so, explaining this social experience wholly 
from themselves, they may blame no one. 
Reasonableness, however, though beautiful, 
does not make hard conditions easy ; at 
best it only saves from absurdity in our 
judgments respecting them. A young lady 
who has no suitors may in sweet reasonable- 
50 



Social Afflictions 



ness confess within herself that it is because 
she is ugly that she has none. This reason- 
ableness, however, does not comfort her ; 
on the contrary, as she takes the explana- 
tion home, there is added a sense of per- 
sonal ignominy to the pang of unrealized 
desire. The deaf man wants the ordinary 
social cheer, the free and hearty greeting of 
neighbor and neighbor, — because in his 
case so much harder to win and hold, he 
not unlikely may prize it more ; and the 
calm acceptance of the fact that his infirmity 
makes it impossible only makes more pain- 
ful the sense of the limitation it imposes. 
On the whole it would be perhaps in one 
sense easier for him could he charge his 
isolation to the cruelty of others rather than 
to his own incapacity ; just as men solace 
their thriftlessness by complaining of politics 
and comfort their littleness by abusing 
providence. No rational acceptance of it, 
not even resignation under it, can make 
this deprivation less than a sorrow. One 
may in pride ignore it or in humility sub- 
mit to it ; all the same it is a frost in his 
5i 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

atmosphere that neither pride nor piety can 
melt out of it. The deaf are sometimes 
chided for withdrawing from society, as to 
the wisdom or unwisdom of doing which I 
shall have something to say on a later page. 
I will here remark, however, that society 
can have little attraction for one who feels 
himself under its ban; who, notwithstanding 
the formal kindness with which he is re- 
ceived, is yet not blinded to the fact that 
he is less desired than tolerated. I state 
the case somewhat strongly, — to some it 
may seem too strongly. My language, how- 
ever, does not exaggerate extreme experience, 
and I must leave it to those less burdened 
to qualify it to their own. 

But, secondly, impatience. Of this, too, 
the deaf have an unhappy tale to tell. Im- 
patience towards one because of an infirmity ! 
a blow for a pain, a punishment for a grief, 
a persecution for a cross ! — Some gentle 
spirit warmly protests that of himself it 
cannot be, yet to whom, a Nathan unto 
David, I may say, " Thou art the man." 
And further, while I affirm it from first- 
52 



Social Afflictions 



hand evidence, I am much more than will- 
ing to soften resentment towards it. It may 
have a cruel sound, it may often be cruel in 
experience; yet not cruel in intent. Some- 
times it may express an impulse to be brief 
and peremptory with one to converse with 
whom is not easy, — a treatment which, if 
we cannot approve, we can at least condone ; 
and very often it tells of nothing more than 
a nervous irritation which an obstacle may 
provoke. It may be often much the same 
feeling as that which we have towards a door 
that will not open readily, and which we are 
apt to press a second time with an impul- 
sive vigor. If our doors could blab, what 
testimony they might bear against us ! 

In no aspect, however, in which philoso- 
phy or charity can show it can such treat- 
ment be other than unpleasant in experience. 
A blow in the face may sometimes be ex- 
tenuated, but an immediate shock or smart 
is all the same its immediate consequence ; 
and a deaf man turning away from such an 
encounter may carry thence an unresentful 
but rarely untroubled heart. He may say 
S3 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

the occasion of the rebuff was in himself; 
but thus he only considerately accounts for, 
he does not meliorate, his hurt. 

There is an interesting comparison that 
brings the significance of this treatment into 
stronger relief. It is frequently observed 
that while blindness begets sympathy, deaf- 
ness begets irritation. There are not a few 
of gentle mould w r ho are eager to deny this, 
who from their sense of what is fitting are 
eager to maintain a tenderness towards both, 
distinguished only as the more lavish 
towards the victim of the greater misfortune. 
The facts, how r ever, I suspect to be against 
them. Go broadly into society and watch 
with careful eyes, and it is all but certain 
that your observation will teach you that, 
while the blind are taken voluntarily by the 
hand and led whither they would go, the 
deaf are replied to with few and hasty words, 
and in tones that betray a petulance. This 
is often superficial, indeed, a surface irrita- 
tion of gentle natures, yet none the less very 
hard to bear. Of course, I only affirm a 
tendency, not denying that there are many 
54 



Social Afflictions 



exceptions, — blind men who are treated 
with rudeness and neglect, deaf men who 
are met with all cordiality and grace. Bring 
a representative of either class into a social 
gathering. The deaf man will be given 
formal politeness, and not a few will show 
him kindness ; but this treatment, however it 
may please, will rarely charm away the con- 
sciousness of a prevailing neglect. The 
blind man, on the other hand, will be met 
with a forward sympathy : in dealing with 
him he will be shown the gentlest courtesy, 
in speaking with him all voices will be given 
the tenderest modulation. Of course, the 
explanation of this difference is, on the one 
side, the irksomeness of communication 
where communication is difficult; on the 
other, the appeal which helplessness without 
unhappy accessories ever makes to gentle 
natures. So it happens that the blind al- 
most always love society, while the deaf so 
often find their best companionship when 
alone. To the former is denied the fine 
array, yet a beauty is borne in upon him by 
which he is warmed and comforted. The 
55 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

latter sees the fine array, but somewhat as he 
looks on boreal splendors through icy air. 
And this contrast in part explains another 
which is often noticed : while blindness in 
the helplessness it imposes is a far greater 
affliction than deafness, the blind as a prevail- 
ing rule are the happier of the two. — I say, 
in part explains ; on a future page I shall 
give yet other explanation. The one hears 
displeasure in so many tones, the other draws 
comfort from all voices. And be it observed 
that it is conduct, not intent, that is here 
complained of. They are often far apart, 
and in dealing with the deaf they are pecu- 
liarly apt to be so. 

Such are some of the social griefs of the 
deaf, — one pressing more heavily here, an- 
other there, but all tending to bereave 
them of the social joy. Is there any rem- 
edy for these griefs ? Probably none from 
the application of which an immediate cure 
can be realized ; though the very statement 
seems to make plain the reverse conduct 
which should at least in some degree do 
away with them. Save in extreme cases, 
56 



Social Afflictions 



the shouting that is complained of could be 
abstained from. Robbing the deaf man of 
his conversation can rarely be absolutely 
necessary ; to refrain from laughing at his 
blunders would imply only a triumph of 
politeness ; the neglect from which he suf- 
fers, Christian tenderness might very appre- 
ciably lessen ; impatience with him, a warmer 
sympathy might very perceptibly meliorate. 
I once had occasion to speak with a stran- 
ger. Failing to catch his reply to me, I sig- 
nified my failure as a deaf man must do. 
He repeated his reply, but there was that in 
his tone which made plain an irritation in 
his spirit. Conversation drifted on, and 
presently he asked the cause of my deafness. 
" I brought it from the Civil War," I ex- 
plained. " Ah ! " said he, " I too was in 
the Civil War. We are comrades." From 
his tone the irritation had now vanished ; 
the sense of comradeship had brought sym- 
pathy in its stead. Here, I suspect, is 
illustration of what will ever be when a 
vivid sense of the reality of our human 
relationships bears sway within us. I 
57 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

suspect, however, that the years will be 
many ere the happy era of such considera- 
tion. 

Meanwhile it is possible that we who 
suffer may find at least a partial remedy 
at home, in the cultivation of a spirit of en- 
durance and sweet reasonableness. First of 
all, let us accept the fact that society in deal- 
ing with us will not be as wise and gentle as 
it might ; and, to brace our charity, it may 
be well for us to turn in scrutiny upon our- 
selves, and see how difficult it is to hold 
action to the level of intent. Ideal conduct, 
the Golden Rule applied, we may look for 
in the kingdom of God, but hardly here 
and now. For many millenniums yet our 
human kind will go blundering along, with 
good intentions in the main, yet from 
thoughtlessness or indifference or oppug- 
nance inflicting unnecessary pain. But, 
you insist, those dealing with us might do 
better, — might be more considerate, more 
gentle, more forbearing. Yes, might; and 
so might you be less touchy, more reason- 
able, more brave. To all there is a might 
58 



Social Afflictions 



be> which even at the poorer ranges of ca- 
pacity more watchfulness should realize. 
There obtrudes here, however, another con- 
sideration. Let us reverse the direction of 
our glance, — take account, that is, not 
of society in relation with ourselves, but 
of ourselves in relation with society, of 
which we have a representative in a well- 
meaning but somewhat undisciplined neigh- 
bor. Grant that with more careful watch 
over himself he might spare us many dis- 
comforts; the query arises, would we have 
him ? Allow that such care would be 
beautiful in him ; would the exaction of it 
be beautiful in us ? Would it not imply an 
unmanliness on our part which it would 
be ignominy to confess ? It seems to me it 
would add to deafness another and an incal- 
culable pang to think of those about me as 
constant in care how to approach me, — as, 
in their cursory dealing with me, on the 
alert not to wound me. I would rather 
have them take it for granted that, though 
the way of suffering is appointed me, there 
is yet some toughness in my fibre ; that I 
59 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

can take the natural discomforts of my in- 
firmity with a reasonable degree of equanim- 
ity. Corns are tender, and mine are as 
sensitive as another's, and if trodden on I 
wince, as I can but do ; yet I would not 
have my neighbors keep off the sidewalk 
for that reason. It may be well to make 
known the happier ways of dealing with 
us, for some will readily and gladly adopt 
them. Many, however, are slow to learn 
or apt at blundering ; and, though with the 
kindest of intentions, will make us miser- 
able if we will let them. Our truer course, 
our only worthy one, is to cultivate the 
moral vigor that in the encounter with these 
discomforts shall prove too much for them. 
Let us try to allow others a natural freedom, 
grateful for whatever consideration they may 
show us, and patient, though we wince, 
under the hurts they unintentionally inflict 
upon us. The condition of suffering is 
fastened upon us ; it is for us to take care 
that our poise and dignity do not desert us. 
Our deprivation is great, but the immediate 
jewel of our souls is still worth preserving. 
60 



Social Afflictions 



A cross is laid upon us ; let us acquit 
ourselves as men, and bear it. 

Secondly, while not comforted by finding 
companions in our misery, it may be well to 
observe that our case is not exceptional. 
Social disabilities are many, — ugly features, 
awkward manners, hesitating speech, want of 
tact, these involve social embarrassments 
different from ours, but quite as real and 
often as serious. Even faculties at best, 
together with fine manner and noble wis- 
dom, if unattended by what we vaguely call 
magnetism, are not sure of special warmth 
of social favor. In fact, in exactness of 
speech, I suppose it is not infirmity that 
society punishes, but inability that it recog- 
nizes, — inability to meet it, to interest it, to 
charm it. You, fellow sufferer, seem often 
to feel that your infirmity should imply no 
difference in your social treatment, an ex- 
action which the stammering and graceless 
and tactless could make with no more un- 
reason. These social discriminations, while 
they can be made cruel, are yet natural and 
scarcely avoidable. They are made against 
6x 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

us, but you and I also make them. There 
are men who cannot speak plainly : their 
voices are managed badly, their articulation 
is indistinct. These, with no cruelty in my 
heart, I salute and pass on. I thus treat 
their infirmity as others mine. This con- 
sideration, if practically taken home, would 
make large deduction from the sum total of 
neglect, which the deaf are ever likely to 
imagine. 

Thirdly, however keen may be our social 
desires, there are social restraints which it is 
the part of wisdom for us to impose upon 
ourselves. One of my own rules, which I 
will dare to commend, is to make myself as 
little obtrusive as possible. Conversation 
may be very animated around me, but I 
hold myself aloof from it. If any wish me 
to talk, my tongue is at their service, if to 
hear, I will poise my trumpet; but I wait 
till the signal is given me. Thus, by hold- 
ing curiosity under constraint, I save my- 
self embarrassment and others annoyance. 
Then, in dealing with those who have given 
clear indication that because of my infirmity 
62 



Social Afflictions 



they do not desire me, I try to be not only 
reserved but charitable. I blame them not, 
though I shun their paths. For their tem- 
per towards me they have ample reason, 
which I frankly acknowledge. At the same 
time I must confess to another and a very 
different feeling towards men and women, 
just a few, who meet me in the old way, 
bestow their smile and betray no annoyance. 
The former, in the presence of a great ob- 
struction, turn away from me ; the latter 
comfort me with a royal courtesy. Those I 
cannot forgive, for I recognize nothing in 
their conduct that needs forgiveness ; but to 
these my heart overflows with a gratitude 
that brightens all my way. A grateful recog- 
nition of special favor may lighten the heavy 
burden of more general griefs. Try it, fel- 
low sufferers, and see if your happier expe- 
rience does not ratify my word. 



63 



V 

BUSINESS EMBARRASSMENTS 



65 



V 

Business Embarrassments 

OF course an infirmity from which one 
suffers socially must be a business 
disability, since so much of business is social 
in its requirement. I use the word " busi- 
ness " in a large sense, embracing in it all the 
many avocations by which a livelihood is won. 
A lawyer is a business man when he puts his 
knowledge or acumen in exchange for the 
money of his client ; and the minister, the 
physician, the teacher, the employee on a 
railway or in a manufactory, in the like 
sense. 

I have more especially in mind, how- 
ever, that touch with human life through 
which a calling is fulfilled and an honorable 
maintenance won. It is in being wrenched 
away from this that the deaf man is likely to 
be made most keenly sensible of his misfor- 
tune. " He is no whole man," says Emer- 
6 7 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

son, who does not know " how to earn a 
blameless livelihood. Society is barbarous 
until every industrious man can get his liv- 
ing without dishonest customs. " I fear it 
must be admitted that he who is deaf is "no 
whole man ; " yet the practical acceptance of 
this fact, implied in the surrender of his 
place in the enterprise and toil of life, is a 
burden on his spirits that is heavy indeed. 
He wants to toil, has ambition to achieve, 
has a service to render, a mission to fulfil ; 
yet that touch of infirmity is a signal that he 
must give up all. He may be a reasonable 
man, but no reasonableness can make easy 
the acceptance of this doom ; and, capacity 
for service still left him, he is likely to see a 
barbarism in the social temper that compels 
it. If one be from predilection a drone, 
willing to let his powers decay and eat a 
bread he does not earn, why, no matter for 
him. To a manly spirit, however, there is 
a demand for achievement ; and he cannot 
be disabled for it without grief, or driven 
from it without resentment. Aside from 
the matter of livelihood, the transfer from 
68 



Business Embarrassments 



the rank of workers to the rank of idlers, 
which is so often the fortune of the deaf, 
implies a wrench which may be accepted 
with sad resignation from Providence, but 
only with bitter resentment from our fellows. 
The matter of livelihood, however, may 
be and often is a sadly obtrusive one. Food, 
shelter, warmth, care in illness, the education 
of children, are not spontaneous products of 
nature or to be had for the asking. If one 
have fortune, though he must still carry 
within him the unhappy consciousness of 
thwarted ambition, he may live without anx- 
iety. But if daily bread depend on daily 
toil, the outlook is likely to be dubious 
enough. The woman who must support 
herself, the man who has children to rear 
and educate and who would not lay heavy 
burdens upon his wife, should be accounted 
of heroic mould if courage does not falter 
on the hard way that must be trodden. To 
the former, the school is closed ; the office 
does not want her, the nursery will not re- 
ceive her, even the kitchen will repudiate 
her. The latter, if he have a farm, can still 
69 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

cultivate it; if he own a fishing-smack, he 
can fish ; if he live in a mining region, he 
can stake a claim and dig ; if he have 
tools and a bench and aptitude for cob- 
bling, he may be permitted to cobble ; he 
may be suffered to saw wood, to shovel 
snow, to mind a dray, and engage in some 
other forms of ill-paid drudgery. But from 
the professions, trade, the manufactory, the 
school, public office, he is sternly barred 
away. His brain may be clear, his body 
strong, his hands deft ; he may have fine 
education, high endowments, trained skill, 
winning manners, reproachless honor. But 
unless he have power as a writer, there is 
scarcely a field in which these high resources 
may have unchallenged exercise. Of many 
things we may conceive him yet capable ; 
yet is he almost sure to be judged, not by 
his capacity, but by his infirmity. He may 
seem fairly entitled to Christian sympathy ; 
yet is he punished for his cross. He would 
seem to be one in the presence of whose 
misfortune competition might hold back, 
allowing him to toil on unmolested in the 
70 



Business Embarrassments 



field where his labor is still successful ; yet 
even here will his infirmity be turned against 
him in the effort to supplant him. 

This, I am well aware, is not a pleasant 
picture ; and some may think its colors too 
deeply laid. In these many years, however, 
I have taken the testimony of not a few of 
my fellow sufferers ; and in the tenor of their 
prevailing confession, despite their bravest 
efforts to be considerate, there has been 
manifest a deep sense of wrong which such 
language as mine does not exaggerate. 
Further, though it is no purpose of mine 
to give utterance here to personal griefs, and 
I could not willingly do so without placing 
against them a long array of personal favors, 
I yet may say that my experience qualifies 
me to put myself in the place of my fellow 
sufferers, and to take the measure of what 
they endure. Is it said that they are too 
deeply involved in this experience to pro- 
nounce upon it fairly ; that the personal 
equation must vitiate their judgment ? Very 
likely this may be; of the personal equation 
all who would be just must take frequent 
71 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

reckoning. Yet the question may be fairly 
pressed, Who can better judge of any con- 
duct than he who knows it best? and these 
business rebuffs come home to the deaf with 
a clearness and vividness of which the casual 
observer, or even he who inflicts them, can 
know nothing. To the latter, they are but 
incidents in life, possibly unpleasant to ex- 
perience, but of no great moment; to the 
former, they have the significance of baffled 
aim, of extinguished hope, of personal or 
domestic want. Again, you may say that 
because this experience is so vital to the deaf 
they find in it an exaggerated grievance. 
This, indeed, may be ; yet still I cling to 
the conviction that could some unbiassed 
Daniel be brought to the judgment, with 
the facts all clear before him, he would pro- 
nounce according to the tenor of my words. 
I have a deaf acquaintance whom I have 
never seen, — an epistolary acquaintance, that 
is, — who compares himself with a criminal 
just discharged from prison, and queries 
which has the better outlook in the fields 
where livelihoods must be won. I like not 
72 



Business Embarrassments 



the comparison. He is apparently a man of 
education and not incapable of nobler feel- 
ings ; and this comparison, in the spirit in 
which he makes it, is unworthy of him. He 
seems to feel that the innocence of his life is 
regarded with no more favor than the ex- 
convict's sin, a judgment which he outrages 
human nature in holding. Yet, in the gen- 
eral struggle for a livelihood it is simply true 
that the deaf man and the ex-convict are 
about equally handicapped. The one has 
(presumably) good capacities but a bad rep- 
utation ; the other good capacities but bad 
hearing ; and it were difficult to say which 
is likely to meet the more persistent and dis- 
couraging rebuff. Depravity and infirmity, 
in the practical dealing with the world, 
are here brought to very nearly the like 
treatment. 

In the presence of this embarrassment, 
especially on the part of those who have 
others depending on them, my word is 
necessarily a sober one. I can treat lightly 
of social embarrassments ; I can commend 
the cheerful view of them, I can even laugh 
73 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

at them, and often do so. But in the pres- 
ence of one who, capable of doing so, is yet 
denied the sacred privilege of providing 
a dignified maintenance for those who are 
dependent on him, I cannot laugh. The 
gravity of his situation draws from me 
rather the sympathy that is due to sorrow 
or an appeal to the fortitude that can bear a 
cross. And if he complains that society 
treats him hardly, however willing I may 
be to extenuate society, I cannot deny his 
fact. For while the source of his grief is in 
part in himself, it is also in part, and that 
no meagre part, in the social dislike of which 
his affliction is the occasion. There are 
many services for which deafness radically 
disqualifies ; but there are others for which 
this particular deaf man is disqualified only 
because he cannot be endured. That is to 
say, the disqualification is rather moral in 
others than physical in him. He has need 
of a little patience, but 

" Alas ! for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 
Under the sun." 

74 



Business Embarrassments 



You are effusive in pity for his infirmity, 
and afflict him with a far weightier burden. 
Mere deafness he might bear with equanim- 
ity, but a needy family is a penetrating 
sorrow. His intellect is at its best, his 
physical vigor is equal to the calls upon it, 
to the world he wears a cheerful front, and 
not unlikely the consciousness of his infir- 
mity may stimulate him to a more strenuous 
fidelity. But there all the same is the in- 
firmity, which certainly does not add to his 
attractiveness, and a considerate and gentle 
dealing with which is witness to a grace of 
spirit, alas ! so rare. So the range of re- 
munerative employment which deafness has 
necessarily narrowed, is still further narrowed 
by intolerance of deafness, until the sufferer, 
unless favored by exceptional fortune, is 
practically driven from the field. There is 
said to be a great demand for farm-labor; 
but that deafness would be a serious obstacle 
to an applicant for this I am not without 
evidence. The deaf laborer might plough 
as straight a furrow, plant and cultivate and 
harvest as well as if possessed of the best 
75 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

possible hearing ; but there is the necessary 
effort to make him hear to which even 
farmer patience could not too confidently 
be judged equal. The qualifications for a 
coachman would seem to be wise care of 
horses, skilful driving, and ever courteous 
behavior ; but these with deafness for ac- 
cessory would ordinarily need to look long 
for employment. The porter is temperate 
and good-natured, and he carries trunks 
valiantly; but the chances are that he 
would lose his job if overtaken by deafness. 
The baker seems to have no great use for 
ears in kneading bread ; but, unless a master 
whom others served, I fear he would be an 
unprosperous baker if his ears were to fail 
him. The printer at his case seems to 
bring into exercise hardly more than a quick 
eye and trained fingers ; but, if a journey- 
man, I suspect he would have to journey 
speedily if deafness were to come upon him, 
and far before another position was offered 
him. Of course very pleasant exceptions 
can be quoted, but thus surely stands the 
rule in what it is our wont to regard as 
76 



Business Embarrassments 



the lower ranges of employment, while in 
the higher we should doubtless find it en- 
forced with increased severity. Here is a 
man active in church and benevolent in 
society ; he gives to missions, helps to build 
an asylum, contributes to the library ; in a 
generous meaning of the word, he visits the 
fatherless and the widow in their affliction 
and keeps himself unspotted from the 
world. Yet it is to be feared that even he, 
in whom the Christian graces are so abound- 
ing, would dismiss from his counting-room 
the book-keeper overtaken by this mis- 
fortune. Indeed, this picture is drawn very 
nearly to the life of one whom I have 
known. The book-keeper might be as 
faithful and efficient as ever, yet in need 
of that tolerance for which deafness must 
always plead. Many a woman who goes 
the rounds of charity in some city, is famil- 
iar with hospital wards and the garrets and 
cellars of the slums, would shun the counter 
behind which a deaf salesman is standing. 
He would serve her with every possible 
care ; but because of this impediment to 
11 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

communication she will not approach him. 
A little while ago she was tender towards 
squalid vice ; she now turns her back upon 
cleanly and well-mannered infirmity. He 
is struggling to maintain a foothold in the 
industrial world, well knowing that if he loses 
it, it will be scarce possible for him to gain 
another ; she pursues a course that is simply 
sure to shake him from it. On the one 
side she is asked the special effort which 
his thickened eardrums make necessary, — 
a second statement of her want with special 
care as to her utterance, which at the dis- 
tant intervals of her infrequent visits would 
imply no serious burden ; on the other, a 
wife's dignity and children's education are 
put in jeopardy by her refusal. These 
illustrations will do for wide tracts of ex- 
perience ; and certainly the minister or the 
moralist may here remark on the expense 
to others by which many spare themselves ; 
and may very seriously ask if such conduct 
is in accord with the standard of virtue they 
profess. I know that instances to a con- 
trary tenor can be quoted, and I am glad to 
78 



Business Embarrassments 



recognize them. I have certainly known a 
porter who was deaf; very likely there are 
farmers who may consistently exact a quali- 
fication of my statement; the deaf coach- 
man or printer may be found ; the deaf 
salesman is not an impossibility. In a 
Massachusetts university there toils a pro- 
fessor whose hearing is very imperfect, yet 
through lengthening years kept at his post, 
revered, beloved, and successful. In a 
Massachusetts village there toils a minister, 
and for more than a quarter of a century 
has toiled, though his deafness is so extreme 
that speech with him is scarcely possible, 
who once told me that in all these years no 
unpleasant reminder of his infirmity, either 
by act or word, had ever come to him from 
his people. 1 Others in our clerical rank — a 
noble minister in Rochester, N. Y., a noble 
minister in Minneapolis, both sorely afflicted 
with deafness — come before me as I write. 



1 I cannot think I need hesitate to say that my refer- 
ence here is to Rev. Joshua Young, of Groton. With this 
testimony before them, all deaf people should pray for the 
prosperity of his church. 

79 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 



I" 


c 


r o r ^ s i 

to re 

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verv 
so im 


or's cha 


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.: Oxr" 

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di bis 

importa 

r 


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trough 


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shown 
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99 1 


Sup- 



ported, too, by the like consideration. Pro- 
fessor Mulrord was enabled to do his nobie 
work in Cambridge. Otner examples most 
likely any reader may supplv, — men like 
these whom I have mentioned, who through 
especially high service or special grace of 
character have won and held an interest 
and appreciation in suite or" tneir infirmity ; 
others, too, less endowed, but capable o: 
be:::r faithful. Such examples, however, 
are only striking and impressive as excep- 
tions to the hard rule on which we have 



On tnis point I must disclaim all bitter- 



"- My reference is to C:.2.:\zs B. Upton, certsirdy :<r.e :: 
the best rhil osc:ui::d rr.ir.is in Engimd. S : me miy think. 
it doubtful if an institution is entitled to much praise for 

the prudence thit 2.bsi2.:ns :::m chrrrir.r its :w: nen in. 
S: 



Business Embarrassments 



ness of feeling, though I cannot deny that 
my feeling is intense ; and when I meet 
bitterness in others, though I cannot ap- 
prove, I do not wonder. But what can be 
done about it ? This question, fellow suf- 
ferers, I address to you. The grievance is 
real ; is there a remedy ? 

Immediate and royal remedy, I suspect 
there is none. Were our case one of 
blighted cornfields, or if, manufacturing 
shoes, we could not sell them at a profit, 
why, we might appeal to Congress for re- 
lief, and failing there, form a new political 
party. It is clearly beyond the power of 
legislation to help us, though, considering 
the promises made by party leaders in 
political campaigns, I do not know but I 
should be insistent in my warnings not to 
be misled by them were our vote of appre- 
ciable importance. No more can we carry 
our grievance to society with any hope of 
gaining relief at its hands. To a slight ex- 
tent we can educate and meliorate society, 
but this is all. Scolding it is of no avail, 
discipline it we cannot. Our remedy, I 
6 81 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

suspect, must be sought at home ; our one 
and only resource is self-discipline, the cul- 
tivation of the more reasonable and heroic 
mind. The burden, indeed, is heavy ; but 
only as we are feeble can it crush us. To 
us as to so many others is the admonition : 
Meet the pressure without with manlier 
resistance from within ; add strength to 
your shoulders and thus lessen the dead 
weight of your cross. It is an old lesson 
which we are slow to apply, yet constrained 
to preach : oppose to the more cruel wrong 
the serener fortitude, and to the darker 
sorrow the more radiant hope. To feeble 
spirits even trifling ills may be overpowering ; 
to a Prometheus a Caucasus is possible. It 
is a truth which we draw from multitudinous 
experience that to the fate that assails the 
body there is a possible counterpoise in the 
spirit, which with God's help we may gain 
through our own endeavors. 

To the attainment of this end we shall 
devote some later pages ; we will here re- 
cord two or three practical considerations 
which will help us in that direction. 
82 



Business Embarrassments 



i. First of all, it cannot be otherwise than 
wholesome for us to take frank reckoning 
of our limitations. Let us frankly face the 
fact that the sphere of our usefulness is 
necessarily narrowed ; that there are many 
services for which our infirmity disqualifies 
us. With respect to these we must admit, 
of course, that we are not wronged, only 
treated justly, in that we are barred away 
from them. You could not serve at a tele- 
phone possibly ; you would not do at all 
as a reporter; the recruiting officer would 
wrong both you and the service were he to 
receive you. As a physician you would be 
wholly out of place at a bedside where the 
throbbings of the heart must be listened 
to, and lips can only faintly tell the tale of 
suffering which skilful practice must exact. 
As a lawyer who must examine witnesses 
you could not blame a litigant for not 
trusting his cause with you ; and think of a 
deaf man as priest in a confessional when 
some fair wrongdoer is confessing her secret 
sins. The frank acknowledgment of limita- 
tion is not immediately comforting, but it is 
83 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

most wholesome. Through it we are brought 
face to face with our real condition, and in- 
dulge no misguiding and enfeebling illusion 
respecting it. So we spare ourselves the 
foolishness of blaming others for that which 
we can only refer to Providence. Here we 
come to that attitude in which we may pos- 
sibly see that it is only reasonable to look 
up. There is often, indeed, a disposition 
to chafe against Providence ; that chafing, 
however, is to no purpose. Providence re- 
mains the same, unmeliorated and unin- 
structed ; the only result is that we are 
bruised and enfeebled. A serene accep- 
tance of the inevitable is not easy to achieve, 
we must cheerfully grant; but there is a 
moral grace in it that is worth the most 
earnest endeavor. It may be somewhat far 
from the Christian, but it at least implies 
the dignity of the stoic, heart. 

2. It is well, too, for us to put ourselves 
in imagination in the place of others ; yes, 
in so doing there are lessons that may come 
home to us which we can ill afford to lose. 
You would keep your place at the counter 
84 



Business Embarrassments 



but the merchant cannot possibly employ 
you if customers will not trade with you. 
The institution cannot retain you in its ser- 
vice if patronage falls off" because of you. 
In many relations in which you otherwise 
might serve, you are yet unavailable be- 
cause people are repelled from you. Here 
is condition from which there is no escape, 
and which, as we would be simply manly, 
we must recognize. There may be chance 
here to read a moral lesson to society, in- 
deed we have already read it ; but let us 
recognize the position of the individual 
man. You need employment, and it is 
hard to be denied it ; but asking it where 
it can only be unprofitable is but a form of 
mendicancy. Your cross is heavy, but what 
would you? It is your cross, yours to bear, 
and for your manhood's sake do not seek 
to devolve it upon another's shoulders. 
Fortune has bruised us, but it is still for us 
to say if we will be men. 

3. We come next to that intolerance of 
which we have spoken, which institution 
and merchant and many others must reckon 
*5 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

with, and which must often dictate their 
dealing with us. Here, as already main- 
tained, we have undoubtedly a grievance, as 
in other relations has many another victim 
of this world's buffet. The treatment is 
hard, — never admit that it is right ; at the 
same time take home the fact that it is 
hardly worth while for us to bruise our- 
selves by resenting it. Do what we will, we 
cannot change society greatly ; and are only 
wise as we deal with its rebuffs and preju- 
dices as with the world's pests and poisons 
and flinty soil and bad weather, not pleased 
yet not offended ; and adapting ourselves to 
them as we may. If railing would avail, 
why, I would say, rail on. Cull from your 
dictionary the choicest vocabulary of denun- 
ciation and fling it forth. It, however, will 
not avail ; or only to make you a more mis- 
erable and more disagreeable, but not a 
more cordially treated, man. 

It is difficult to speak to the comfort of 

one so handicapped. The best I can say is, 

Reconcile your mind to the narrow sphere, 

the lowly task, and, in poise of spirit, live 

86 



Business Embarrassments 



above it. For most there is a corner some- 
where, where they may have a few flowers 
and all the stars. Accept the corner and 
look up. The world may doom you to 
plain living, but only you can deny yourself 
high thinking. Deafness is of itself an irk- 
some and a heavy load, and its entail of 
poverty and struggle is very hard to bear; 
but worse than either, worse than both, is 
the spirit broken and discouraged. And, 
after all, is it not a supreme proof of a manly 
heart to take up a heavy and a gnarly cross 
and carry it ? 



87 



VI 

THE PATHOS OF DEAFNESS 



8 9 



VI 

The Pathos of Deafness 

I THOUGHT to write in this chapter 
of the Humor and Pathos of Deafness. 
A little reflection, however, showed me that 
while deafness may be pathetic, it can hardly 
in the nature of things be humorous. Hu- 
mor is warm and cheerful and comforting. 
It is a sunny friend, a cheerful visitant. It 
brings smiles at the expense of no one, but 
to the good cheer of all. Deafness, on the 
other hand, is a fountain of bitterness. It 
may impose disciplines that strengthen and 
call forth sympathies that ennoble, but it 
yields no cheer. The blunders of the deaf 
very often provoke laughter, in which they 
too may join ; but here, as I conceive, we 
have illustration of the ludicrous, and the 
ludicrous and the humorous are very differ- 
ent. The humorous comes out of the rich- 
ness of life ; it is sweet perfume or pleasant 
9 1 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

flavor. The ludicrous, save where it is a 
part that is played, bears nearer resemblance 
to the whiff of ammonia, or the swallowing 
of that which is rancid to our taste. Aristotle 
defines : " The ludicrous is produced by 
any defect that is unattended by pain or by 
fatal consequences." And he goes on to say 
that an " ugly and deformed countenance 
does not fail to cause laughter, if it is not 
occasioned by pain." The ludicrous may 
be often indeed of intention, and that we 
may laugh ; as in the case of the circus 
clown, who retails from his far sought and 
long practised absurdities, though his spirits 
are jaded or morose ; or it may be of the 
slips and blunders and misunderstandings 
to which the deaf are ever liable. 

Any deaf man can supply illustrations 
from his experience ; and the current tales 
of mishap on the part of the deaf are appo- 
site enough. Mr. James Payn, writing in 
the " Forum" (vol. xii.), tells of a lady "more 
remarkable for her airs than her graces " 
who was described as treating every one 
with hauteur. " I am astonished at her 
92 



The Pathos of Deafness 



doing that," said a deaf man ; and well he 
might have been, for he thought she had 
been described as treating every one to 
porter. 

In the same article this writer tells of a 
company conversing of the Indian mutiny. 
One of the number, telling of a rebel who 
fell into the hands of the British, said, " He 
had me a short shift." "What did that 
matter," asked a deaf gentleman contemptu- 
ously, " in so warm a climate ? " 

I recall an instance which a lively woman 
used to narrate in California. She had been 
travelling by railway, and had left the train 
at a station a mile or two from a little village 
which was her destination. Looking round 
for some conveyance, she espied an old man 
seated in a rough country wagon, in which 
were already a couple of passengers. It was 
apparently not a public carriage, so she ap- 
proached him and smilingly asked, " Will 
you carry me?" The old man gave a start, 
as if an electric current had struck him, and 
replied in a half-frightened way: "No, lady; 
I 'm very sorry, lady ; but indeed I can't. 
93 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

I 've a wife and eight children now, lady." 
Penetrating his dull ears, her request was an 
invitation to marry her. 

It is a fact that all do not know as well as 
they might that the chief difficulty in hearing 
is with the consonants. Vowel sounds carry 
themselves, and can rarely be mistaken by 
the dullest ears, but consonants must be 
articulated if they are to be heard ; and the 
very prevalent habit of slurring them, while 
often the discomfort of those who can hear, 
is the despair of those who can't. Ordi- 
narily I suppose that deaf people do a good 
deal of guessing as to what is said to them ; 
and if their general faculties are alert they 
can often guess quite successfully. The con- 
sonants they do not hear they supply, and 
so get on. With one order of words, how- 
ever, guessing is peculiarly unsafe, and that 
is proper names ; especially when given in 
introductions, which for some unaccountable 
reason are almost always in a still small 
voice. Hence arises a habit with some deaf 
people, when not clearly hearing the name 
of one to whom they are introduced, of ask- 
94 



The Pathos of Deafness 



ing that it be spelled to them. I used to do 
so until I came upon the following incident, 
which showed me that the practice involved 
perils. A deaf man, not clearly hearing a 
name that was given him in an introduc- 
tion, asked to have it spelled to him, 
which was promptly and loudly done, — 
"S-M-I-T-H." 

I have a clerical acquaintance, a man of 
much ability but very deaf, who tells this story 
of himself. He was the principal speaker on 
some public occasion, and had spoken, we 
may well believe, a wise and inspiring word. 
As he sat down, the president of the meet- 
ing made a brief address, following which 
the whole audience arose. The minister, 
hearing nothing, but supposing that to stand 
up was the thing in order, arose with the 
rest. There was manifest amusement in the 
audience, which he could well appreciate 
when it was told him that the rising was 
a vote of thanks to himself. 

I think I may dare to draw an incident 
out of my own experience. I have had my 
share of such mishaps, doubly and trebly 
95 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

sufficient for my humiliation, if I would 
allow unavoidable accidents to humiliate me. 
One, however, stands out conspicuously 
from all the rest ; and if a prize were offered 
for a deaf man's blunder, the best, or per- 
haps I should rather say, the worst, I think 
I might enter it with good hope that I 
should win. It was in the earlier years of 
my ministry, and my wife and I were invited 
to dine with one of my good deacons. In 
that New Hampshire region few laymen 
were in the habit of asking a blessing at 
table ; but it was quite the custom to invite 
the minister to do so, and what is customary 
is looked for. At that time my deafness, 
though rapidly growing upon me, was in its 
earlier stages, and I was resolutely striving 
by special alertness to fight off its natural 
consequences. So, waiting for the invitation, 
which surely my reverent deacon would not 
withhold, I construed a seeming nod to be 
that, and bowed my head and reverently said 
grace. Raising my head, I caught the eyes 
of my wife from across the table, who was 
looking at me as only wives can look, her 
96 



The Pathos of Deafness 



face all colors except the right one. It was 
clearly apparent that something had gone 
wrong, though I could not divine what. 
The table was bountifully spread and cheer- 
ful, and the hour of conversation after it was 
very pleasant, even bordering upon hilarity 
(may no pious soul be troubled at thought 
of a minister and deacon hilarious) ; and I 
quite forgot that reproving glance, that face 
of many colors. Wives, however, though 
in many ways useful, can rarely be depended 
upon to forget; and, reaching home, my 
ignominy was shown me. The deacon, him- 
self slightly deaf and of soft and muffled 
voice, was equal to saying grace, even in the 
presence of his minister, and had done so. 
That food, like Mercy, was twice blessed. 
We had blessed it in concert. It pleases 
me now to think that in the collision I did 
not knock him off the track ; and if there 
was any contrariety in our petitions, I hope 
the Lord, who heard us both, discriminated 
in his favor. It was his food, and so it 
seems only right that it should have been 
blessed according to his mind, not mine. 
7 97 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

Of such nature are the mishaps into which 
the deaf, if they attempt to be social, are 
continually falling, — blunders manifold of 
speech and conduct, against which no wis- 
dom can make provision. And there is 
nothing of humor in them, — they do not 
come out of a smiling spirit, as humor ever 
must ; and the smile they occasion is at the 
expense of one, not the joy of alL In their 
superficial aspect, however, they are ridicu- 
lous ; and those who view them very natur- 
ally will laugh at them. And thus it is my 
own wont to do, even when I am the humili- 
ated subject of them. If I know my own 
spirit, I would not devolve upon others even 
a meagre part of the burden of my infirmity ; 
but if there is any fun I insist upon having 
my share of that. Sometimes I think I am 
entitled to the greater portion because I am 
the occasion of so much ; and I inflict upon 
others the story of my mishaps in order that 
I may have my laugh. Laugh, brother in 
affliction, laugh* The best way to get on 
with a misery is to laugh at it if you can ; 
indeed so potent a medicine is laughter that 
9 8 



The Pathos of Deafness 



it is well to seek occasions for it, and mag- 
nify them to the utmost. A misery cannot 
wholly crush us ; to some extent we are 
masters of it when we can laugh at it. In 
advancing years, I indulge many a retrospect 
of those brave days when I was in the ranks 
of the Union Army during the Civil War. 
Of course we had hard experiences ; — our 
sons who went to Santiago, we smile when 
they talk of war. But in every troop there 
was reasonably sure to be some one endowed 
with the happy faculty of seeing misery in a 
ludicrous aspect, and by some inspired com- 
ment making it the buffet of his comrades' 
laughter. Such should be doubly pensioned 
for their incalculable service. It was after a 
hard day's march and the bivouac was fireless 
and not impossibly supperless, and with the 
fatigue and hunger we were filled with mis- 
givings and forebodings and homesick yearn- 
ings. With that laughter, however, came 
brightness and warmth and satiety. Joke 
was sure to follow joke, peal on peal laughter 
succeeded laughter, and so misery was held 
at bay. The rain might drizzle without, but 
99 
[LofC. 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

it could not extinguish an inward jollity. 
Our surroundings, as our mothers might 
have viewed them, were dismal enough ; but 
somehow our laughter made them cheerful. 
It was a muddy couch with no shelter over 
us, but we laughed and slept and dreamed, 
and woke up to laugh and do and dare. In 
the story of Pandora's box I see a parable 
which it is impossible to disown, and my 
meditations upon which, even when most 
serene, are apt to be too pensive for my joy. 
Over against the legend, however, I have 
sometimes constructed another, which tells 
how, as the swarming ills flew forth, some 
god in pity for mankind created Laughter, 
and sent him to our world to aid in counter- 
vailing them. He is not equal to all our 
griefs, indeed; for some are in their nature 
sacred, and in the presence of these the sprite 
is reverently silent; and some, it must be 
confessed, are too heavy for his charm. But 
in our wrestle with all others, the great multi- 
tude with which we are brought to deal, he 
is at our call ; and when his challenge rings 
forth they are discomfited. 

IOO 



The Pathos of Deafness 



In their deeper nature, however, such 
incidents are anything but laughable. We 
smile at their absurdity only because we for- 
get the sorrow that is its explanation. The 
Queen of England is said to be growing deaf, 
and recently an inappropriate remark of hers 
on some state occasion was quoted with the 
comment, " How pathetic ! " Doubtless the 
writer's sympathies were touched by consider- 
ation of her royal station, and the need she 
has of the unfettered exercise of a royal 
grace. His remark, however, applies as fit- 
tingly to all others, who from like cause err 
in like manner ; — princesses and common 
folk are brought to a level under the touch 
of infirmity. These incidents, laughable as 
they seem, are manifestations of weakness : 
we may write them in the category of a fall 
because the limbs are weak, of wandering 
steps because the eyes are dim, of stammer- 
ing speech because paralysis has touched the 
tongue, of intellectual aberrations because 
reason has lost the power of guidance. 
Viewed in their manifestation, they may 
be amusing ; viewed in their cause, they are 

IOI 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

too sad for smiles. And it is in this latter 
aspect that the deaf are wont to view them. 
They may take their situation tranquilly, and 
wear a cheerful front when such accidents 
befall them; still they know that they thus 
publish an incapacity which, always hard to 
bear, is far harder when thus made conspicu- 
ous. The ludicrous in their conduct is a 
sorrow to them chiefly because they are 
helpless to prevent it. The buffoon may be 
an interesting character, and we may applaud 
his effort for our entertainment ; but few 
indeed can be of happy mind when of com- 
pulsion they have sustained his role. To 
personate Falstaff may be an actor's pride, 
but to be Falstaff in reality is another matter. 
For myself, though I am wont to smile at 
my misadventures, I feel in the contempla- 
tion of them like a necessitated Costard 
wholly unsuited to my part. 

Thus the mishaps of the deaf, which often 
seem so laughable, are really illustrations of 
the pathos of his life. They reflect an in- 
eptitude which in its deep significance is a 
suffering. The laughter they provoke is at 

102 



The Pathos of Deafness 



a variety of sorrow. I recall a scene from 
war experience. We were constructing for- 
tifications under intense heat; when sud- 
denly one of our number, dropping his 
spade, plunged a little to the rear and 
seemed to indulge in a fantastic dance at- 
tended by wild gesticulations. A shout of 
laughter greeted the performance, and a 
volley of jokes was fired at the performer. 
A moment later, however, our countenances 
were sober enough, when we discovered that 
our laughter had been at the contortions of 
a dying man. 

There are, however, other and positive 
illustrations of this pathos on which we may 
linger for a moment. Most of the features 
of the deaf man's experience on which we 
have lingered might be summoned here. 
This altered relation with outward nature, 
this exchange of a world of melody for a 
world that is soundless or nearly so, is not 
to be conceived a matter of little moment. 
There are listless and phlegmatic tempera- 
ments that may not mind it, but to an 
ardent and imaginative spirit it brings a 
103 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

sense of deprivation which is likely to 
deepen as the years lengthen. The sounds 
of dripping rain and flowing river, of sway- 
ing trees and humming insects, may seem 
not of superlative importance, but I do not 
like to go my way without them. My in- 
terest in birds has never tempted me to any 
serious study of them ; but I would give 
much to hear their delirious jubilee once 
more ; and such I am sure would be almost 
uniformly the deaf man's testimony. There 
is a world just beyond him which is his 
birthright and his appointed home from 
which he must hold aloof. The door is 
hospitably open, but he cannot enter. There 
comes from this experience a sense of repres- 
sion; he is within the walls of a prison 
from which there is no deliverance. With 
respect to society, too, he carries the sense 
of an analogous deprivation, only here he 
seems shut out, banished from that fellow- 
ship with his kind which a normal human 
spirit ever asks. He wants to go in com- 
pany, but must walk alone ; he wants the 
social circle, but must sit apart. Shut in 
104 



The Pathos of Deafness 



from nature, shut out from society, a sense 
of isolation is sure to haunt him. He has 
yet other faculties, and he may find conso- 
lation in the use of them : the hills are still 
there, and the soaring sky, and the shining 
sea : the meadows are green, the birds on 
the wing, the flowers bloom, the breezes are 
laden with vigor and sweet odors : there are 
truths to learn, duties to perform, causes to 
serve ; yet none the less this twofold sense 
of deprivation is an abiding fact, of which he 
can have at most only brief periods of un- 
consciousness. There is ever an alluring 
threshold which he may not pass, a relation 
for which he yearns, but from which he is 
hopelessly divorced. 

There is another illustration of impressive 
significance. On another page I have com- 
pared the blind and the deaf, finding the 
former with their greater affliction the hap- 
pier of the two, and this because of the 
gentler treatment which they receive. In 
dealing with them all voices are gentle, all 
acts are kind, and they deeply feel the smile 
they cannot see. But this is not all. The 
105 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

difference in their degree of happiness is yet 
further explained by another contrast that 
comes now into view. While the blind from 
simple necessity must submit to their condi- 
tion, do little of their own direction, and be 
led whither they will go, with the deaf it is 
not so. They cannot in this practical way 
accept their condition, and so they are con- 
stantly chafing against it. They must go 
forth, they must act, though with the expe- 
rience of repulse at every turn. Their life 
is an incessant struggle with gravity, a beat- 
ing against bars, a wrestle with fate, the re- 
sult of which is discomfiture and bruises 
manifold. The former are spared as a child 
is spared, their helplessness winning for 
them the guiding hand and the shielding 
care to which their spirits soon learn ac- 
commodation. The latter are bruised as 
men must be bruised in struggling where 
they cannot win, in beating " where they 
may not pass." I wonder if the tale of 
Sisyphus may not be a poetic embellishment 
of a deaf man's experience. 

These elements of a deaf man's misery 
106 



The Pathos of Deafness 



have more especially to do with his out- 
ward relations. There is another more 
especially within him, but which, like heart 
disease or an evil temper, bears a part in 
his outward relations at last. It is distrac- 
tion. It is my wont to connect this very 
considerably with the head noises of which 
I have spoken. Rarely will any two be 
met who will make the like report of these, 
but probably most find them the source 
of a bewilderment which is the unhappy 
attendant of all their walk. This is not 
only a misery in itself; it is a source of 
difficulties and perplexities manifold. In 
the work of life it is a sad incumbrance ; 
intellectual poise is disturbed by it. The 
serene confidence in himself, which every 
man must have who will achieve his best, 
it takes away. Here is my own weightier 
charge against these noises. A large part 
of my work has been studious, dealing, 
too, with the severer problems, and so has 
made demand for a close concentration of 
thought, which this bewilderment has made 
often impossible and always more difficult. 
107 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

Intellectual meandering, errors of fact, faulty 
construction, are perils to which it con- 
stantly exposes me when I write. Achieve- 
ment is thus made almost painfully slow 
by reason of the self-watchfulness which I 
feel compelled to exercise. But when I 
go out of my study it goes with me ; at 
table, in society, on the street, it is a dis- 
liked companion that I cannot drive away 
from me. In many relations it has become 
a part of my personal equation, for which, 
as I would be sane in my judgments, I 
must make allowance; and as with me, so 
I suppose it must be with most. 

These elements taken together impose 
a burden that is not slight. I would not 
exaggerate it, there are others that are far 
harder, and though heavy, it is one that 
a vigorous manhood might hope to bear 
with a fair degree of equanimity. Throw 
them, for instance, upon that man who 
passed my window an hour ago, in the full 
vigor of thirty years, toiling out of doors, 
eating heartily and sleeping soundly, and 
though at once sensible of their discomforts, 
108 



The Pathos of Deafness 



he might yet carry them with comparative 
serenity. He would have strength with 
which to meet them, just as he has strength 
for the plough he holds or the stone-wall he 
builds. Unhappily, however, they are not 
to be judged alone by their immediate dis- 
comforts ; there are consequences which fol- 
low upon them which must be taken into the 
reckoning. That man has a physical organ- 
ism presumably at its best, which the deaf 
man from the steady wear of these miseries 
cannot long possess. These head noises 
alone, — there are few nervous organisms 
so hardy that they will not wear out at 
last from their constant irritation. Of 
these noises insomnia is at last almost cer- 
tain to be the attendant ; with many, in- 
deed, at first. Our psychology has not 
yet settled all questions as to the relation 
of nerves to mind ; but this we know, that 
mind is at the interior end of them, and 
reflects their state. It is not strange, there- 
fore, and the fact is witnessed to by wide 
experience, that from the prolonged wear 
of these miseries unhappy mental tenden- 
109 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

cies are almost sure to appear. By some, 
indeed, they may be driven away, — never 
conquered, but held in abeyance, — but 
only through a continuous and arduous 
and ever harder fight ; and alas ! all are 
not fighters. I am trying to speak with 
moderation, yet I must dare to say that 
a serene and cheerful spirit that has sur- 
vived a long experience of extreme deaf- 
ness, especially if attended with head noises, 
would impress me as a delightful exception. 
One ruled by high principle and severely 
trained in the nobler standards of conduct, 
by constant watchfulness and earnest en- 
deavor, may carry this infirmity into deep- 
ening years with a smiling front from which 
the world will infer a sunny heart. But 
overhear his soliloquies as he sits or walks 
alone, bring yourself into such relation with 
him that you can look within him, and you 
will be almost sure to discover that his 
smile is of his duty and not his joy. It 
is a brightness that he offers others in 
consideration for their happiness, not a 
spontaneous radiance from his heart. The 

I IO 



The Pathos of Deafness 



interior consequence of deafness, the result 
to which it almost inevitably tends, is de- 
spondency ; and if the sufferer escapes irrita- 
bleness, moroseness, and moral bitterness, 
he may well bless the kindly fortune that 
spares him the deeper grief which his in- 
firmity is so likely to entail. In a way he 
may entertain cheerful views, he may be 
optimistic in his creed, and stoutly say, 
"All's right with the world." Yet he 
maintains it in the sad consciousness that 
something is wrong with him. His suf- 
ferings are a medium through which the 
light is discolored as it enters into him. 
His nobler philosophies are held in spite 
of, rather than are comforted by, his ex- 
perience. Notwithstanding his philosophy, 
the brightness of the world is dimmed, and 
he pensively muses when according to his 
faith he should rejoice. He may hold his 
own as a rational and revering nature, but 
with a sad and anxious consciousness of 
struggle as he does so. At best he feels 
himself but a resolute swimmer against a 
current by which but for his valiant and 
1 1 1 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

unintermitted stroke he would inevitably 
be borne downward. I would not claim 
too much for those with whom I am so 
closely affiliated, and in the presence of 
whose victories over suffering I am re- 
minded by painful contrast of my own 
humiliations. Yet I may own the feeling 
that those who bear this burden with se- 
renity through many years achieve a moral 
victory that is not slight. I cannot parti- 
cipate in their triumph, their laurels I can- 
not share. My defeats, however, may in 
some measure qualify me to accord to them 
their praise. I have struggled in the cur- 
rent sufficiently at least to know how deter- 
mined must be the will and how dauntless 
the faith and how tireless the effort that 
shall successfully breast it. 

Illustrations of the effect of deafness 
upon the spirits are of easy access ; any 
neighborhood can furnish them, and most 
readers will at once recall them. There is 
the experience of one, however, that has 
peculiarly interested me, and which is es- 
pecially suited to this page because that of 

I 12 



The Pathos of Deafness 



one of rank so high and of fame so wide. 
It is that of Beethoven, and comes to us 
in his letters over which many an eye has 
moistened. From these I will quote a few 
passages. I find myself in a measure criti- 
cal of his utterances, for I do not find in 
them the heroic tone. They were, how- 
ever, the unpremeditated outpourings of 
his heart to those who were near to him, 
and with probably no thought of the public 
eye ; and if they speak with an intensity 
of feeling which many would like to abate, 
they may remember that they are dealing 
with one whose nature was peculiarly sen- 
sitive, and to whom, as a musician, the 
blight was peculiarly damaging : and who 
saw in it the baffling of great powers which 
he knew were within him. Writing to 
Amenda, in the year 1800, he says: — 

" Oh ! how happy should I now be, had I my 
full sense of hearing ; I would then hasten to you ; 
whereas, as it is, I must withdraw from every- 
thing. My best years will thus pass away, with- 
out effecting what my talents and powers might 
have enabled me to perform. How melancholy 
8 1 1.3 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

is the resignation in which I must take refuge ! 
I had determined to rise superior to all this, but 
how is it possible ? If in the course of six months 
my malady be pronounced incurable, then, Amenda ! 
I shall appeal to you to leave all else and come 
to me, when I intend to travel . . . and you 
must be my companion. . . . You will not, I 
know, refuse my petition ; you will help your 
friend to bear his burden and his calamity. ... I 
beg you will keep the fact of my deafness a profound 
secret, and not confide it to any human being." 

Not of the noblest temper this. We 
can easily quote from prophet and martyr 
both word and example by the side of 
which these utterances would look unheroic 
enough. Paul would not have written so, 
no, nor Epictetus. There are men around 
us serenely bearing a far heavier cross, and 
women still trusting and smiling on whose 
hearts has fallen a far darker blight. Plainly 
here is not the spirit that is poised on the 
assurance, " When thou passest through the 
waters, I will be with thee, and through 
the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." 
Still there are few who have long suffered 
from deafness who may not see in these 
114 



The Pathos of Deafness 



words some reflection of themselves, at 
least in their occasional moods ; and many 
who are not deaf may see the condition of 
no ordinary grief in the seeming eclipse 
of a great career. 

In the same year he wrote another 
friend : — 

" You wish to know how I am, and what rem- 
edies I use. Unwilling as I always feel to discuss 
this subject, still I feel less reluctant to do so with 
you than with any other person. For some 
months past Vering has ordered me to apply blis- 
ters on both arms, of a particular kind of bark, — 
a disagreeable remedy, independent of the pain, as 
it deprives me of the free use of my arms for a 
couple of days at a time, till the blisters have 
drawn sufficiently. The ringing and buzzing in 
my ears have certainly rather decreased, particularly 
in the left ear, in which the malady first com- 
menced, but my hearing is not at all improved ; in 
fact, I fear that it is become rather worse. . . . 
What is your opinion of Schmidt [an army sur- 
geon] ? I am unwilling to make a change, but it 
seems to me that Vering is too much of a practi- 
tioner to acquire new ideas by reading. On this 
point Schmidt appears to be a very different man, 
would probably be less negligent with regard to 
ii5 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

my case. I hear wonders of galvanism ; what 
do you say to it ? A physician told me that he 
knew a deaf and dumb child whose hearing was 
restored by it [in Berlin], and likewise a man who 
had been deaf for seven years, and recovered his 
hearing. I am told that your friend Schmidt is at 
this moment making experiments on the subject." 

Those were not the days of the modern 
specialist, whose keen science can detect so 
much, but alas ! can cure so few. It was, 
however, as now, the day of the empiricist 
and quack, and Beethoven, like so many of 
us, was seizing upon the report of whatever 
nostrum held out a promise of relief, no 
matter how absurdly ; following will-o'-the- 
wisps to the natural issue in vanity. Very 
likely, like ourselves, he may at times have 
caught a gleam of hope from these insidious 
assurances, and gone his way in the elation 
of prospective remedy. Yet even in this 
very letter, with the potencies of galvanism 
and the skill of Dr. Schmidt so vividly be- 
fore him, he could write : — 

"You could scarcely believe what a sad and 
dreary life mine has been for the last two years ; 
116 



The Pathos of Deafness 



my defective hearing everywhere pursuing me like 
a spectre, making me fly from every one, and 
appear like a misanthrope." 

In the same year, a few months earlier, 
he wrote : — 

" My ears are buzzing and ringing perpetually, 
day and night. I can with truth say that my life 
is very wretched ; for nearly two years past I have 
avoided all society, because I find it impossible to 
say to people, / am deaf! In any other profession 
this might be more tolerable, but in mine such a 
condition is truly frightful. Besides, what would 
my enemies say to this ? — and they are not few 
in number." 

By enemies, I suppose he means those who 
combated and disparaged him as a musical 
artist. 

In the same letter he further writes : — 

" In the theatre I am obliged to lean close up 
against the orchestra in order to understand the 
actors, and when a little way off I hear none of 
the high notes of instruments or singers. It is 
most astonishing that in conversation some people 
never seem to observe this; being subject to fits 
of absence, they attribute it to that cause. I often 
can scarcely hear a person speaking low; I can 
117 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

distinguish the tones, but not the words, and yet 
I feel it intolerable if any one shouts to me. 
Heaven alone knows how it is to end ! . . . How 
often have I cursed my existence ! Plutarch led 
me to resignation. I shall strive if possible to set 
Fate at defiance, although there must be moments 
in my life when I cannot fail to be the most un- 
happy of God's creatures. I entreat you to say 
nothing of my affliction to any one. ... I con- 
fide the secret to you alone. . . . Resignation ! 
— what a miserable refuge ! and yet it is my sole 
remaining one." 

" Plutarch led me to resignation." It 
may occur to some that he might have done 
well had he pondered Plutarch a little more, 
and so have imbued his spirit somewhat 
more thoroughly with the heroic virtue 
which the stoic moralist inculcates. When 
he speaks of Resignation as a cc miserable 
refuge," it is very evident that he has not 
attained it ; for at that far summit 

" Heaven's light forever shines, earth's shadows fly ; " 

and that he was enveloped in fog, depressing 

and impenetrable, we need no other witness 

than the spirit that breathes through these 

118 



The Pathos of Deafness 



utterances. However, Beethoven was no 
stoic, and in that he was none he comes 
nearer to the most of us. The reflections 
of a Marcus or a Socrates under the like 
affliction would doubtless have been of a far 
higher order; but thus, I fear, less faithful 
to the common sorrow. The latter in regal 
speech would have taught us how to bear ; 
but the former gives voice to what we suffer. 

Here is an extract from another letter, 
written two years later. It is somewhat 
retrospective in its view, and deals much 
with that sensitiveness which many think 
foolish, but which is certainly human. It 
also lets us into the deeper depths of his 
sorrow, and declares the high aim through 
which alone he felt himself able to endure 
it,— 

" Born with a passionate and excitable temper- 
ament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of so- 
ciety, I was yet obliged early in life to isolate 
myself, and to pass my existence in solitude. If 
at any time I resolved to surmount all this, oh ! 
how cruelly was I again repelled by the experience, 
sadder than ever, of my defective hearing ! — and 
yet I found it impossible to say to others, Speak 
119 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

louder ; shout ! for I am deaf ! Alas ! how could 
I proclaim the deficiency of a sense which ought 
to have been more perfect with me than with 
other men, — a sense which I once possessed in 
the highest perfection, to an extent, indeed, that 
few of my profession ever enjoyed ! Alas, I can- 
not do this ! Forgive me therefore when you see 
me withdraw from you with whom I would so 
gladly mingle. My misfortune is doubly severe 
from causing me to be misunderstood. No lon- 
ger can I enjoy recreation in social intercourse, 
refined conversation, or mutual outpourings of 
thought. Completely isolated, I only enter society 
when compelled to do so. I must live like an ex- 
ile. In company I am assailed by the most pain- 
ful apprehensions, from the dread of being exposed 
to the risk of my condition being observed. It 
was the same during the last six months I spent 
in the country. My intelligent physician recom- 
mended me to spare my hearing as much as pos- 
sible, which was quite in accordance with my 
present disposition, though sometimes, tempted by 
my natural inclination for society, I allowed my- 
self to be beguiled into it. But what humiliation 
when any one beside me heard a flute in the far 
distance, while I heard nothing, or when others 
heard a shepherd singing, and I still heard nothing ! 
Such things brought me to the verge of despera- 
tion, and well nigh caused me to put an end to 

120 



The Pathos of Deafness 



my life. Art! art alone, deterred me. Ah! how 
could I possibly quit the world before bringing forth 
all that I felt it was my vocation to produce ? And 
thus I spared this miserable life — so utterly miser- 
able that any sudden change may reduce me at any 
moment from my best condition into the worst. 
It is decreed that I must choose Patience for my 
guide. This I have done. I hope the resolve 
will not fail me, steadfastly to persevere till it may 
please the inexorable Fates to cut the thread of 
my life. Perhaps I may get better, perhaps not. I 
am prepared for either. Constrained to become 
a philosopher in my twenty-eighth year ! This is 
no slight trial, and more severe on an artist than 
on any one else. God looks into my heart, He 
searches it, and knows that love for man and feel- 
ings of benevolence have their abode there ! Oh ! 
ye who may one day read this, think that you 
have done me injustice, and let any one similarly 
afflicted be consoled, by rinding one like himself, 
who, in defiance of all the obstacles of Nature, 
has done all in his power to be included in the 
ranks of estimable artists and men." 

Eight years later he wrote to the same 
friend once more : — 

" I should not only be happy, but the happiest 
of men if a demon had not taken up his settled 

121 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

abode in my ears. Had I not somewhere read 
that man must not voluntarily put an end to his 
life while he can still perform even one good 
deed, I should long since have been no more, and 
by my own hand too ! Ah ! how fair is life ; but 
for me it is forever poisoned ! " 

Evidently he still needed his Plutarch, if 
not a higher lesson and a diviner guide. 
Whatever else these utterances may bear in 
upon us, we surely find nothing of resigna- 
tion in them. Resignation is a mountain- 
peak, whose sides are flinty, and up which 
we toil with weary limbs and bleeding feet, 
but at whose top our souls dilate as they 
take in the glory. Plainly he never reached 
this summit, nor even in upward climb at- 
tained beyond the thorny bramble at its 
base. His was ever a bruised spirit, never 
a resigned one. These are plaints of one 
baffled and repressed, beating against con- 
ditions that only wound him more the more 
strenuously he throws himself against them, 
— as with so many others whom the like 
sorrow has overtaken. 

Of course all bear in mind that these are 

122 



The Pathos of Deafness 



the utterances of no ordinary man ; of one 
highly and delicately organized, of sensitive 
temperament, of burning enthusiasm, de- 
voted, too, to an art in the prosecution of 
which hearing would seem to have been 
only less indispensable than speech to Cicero 
or sight to Raphael. For him we can well 
admit that the cross was peculiarly hard to 
bear. Yet was he clay and spirit as are we ; 
and hindered progress and balked ideals, 
and immitigable suffering in their essential 
features are the same to all. If terrible in 
the experience of a Beethoven, they cast a 
shadow only a little less dark upon natures 
of lower range ; and multitudes there are 
who lament less loudly, who hear in these 
passionate utterances the outbursts of a grief 
which is their not unfrequent visitant. In 
shadow and in light, the great are the more 
representative, not the exceptional. 



123 



VII 

HELPS AND CONSOLATIONS 
OF DEAFNESS 



125 



VII 

Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

THE last chapter presented a melan- 
choly picture, but it is doubtful if its 
colors were too deeply laid. Deafness is a 
grave infirmity ; no truthful account of it 
can make it less than that. And we must 
bear it ; that, fellow sufferers, is a doom from 
which for most of us there is no escape. 
There are forms of deafness, indeed, that are 
remediable ; and such as are afflicted with 
them it will be presumed will seek the rem- 
edy. If not, I have no sympathy that I 
can spare them. These words are for the 
large class whose case is irremediable, and 
with whom the practical question is as to the 
manner of their bearing. It surely does not 
befit us to bear ill what we can possibly bear 
well : we have a manhood at stake here 
which we are bound by whatever means to 
defend. This brings us at once to the con- 
127 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

sideration of helps that we may reach out to. 
There is always, of course, the support of 
religion, which the Christian minister of all 
men should not forget, and which I doubt 
not I shall reach ere I am through. And 
yet I know that there are those to whom 
appeal to this seems practically a confession 
that there is no help in us ; whose attitude 
of mind is not far from that of the mother 
of Mary Somerville, who though very timid 
of the sea once ventured a short voyage 
upon it. There was a stiff gale, and the 
waves to any but sailors' eyes rolled high. 
At length the captain, having knowledge 
of her fears and willing to tease her, sent 
her word that they must put their trust in 
Providence. " Why, mercy ! " exclaimed the 
devout but terrified old lady, cc has it come 
to that?" 

Perhaps it were better for us to take 
Heaven into our reckoning together with 
the conception of means of relief which it is 
the will of Heaven for us to lay hold upon, 
and which we are disobedient to Heaven if 
we neglect. Our problem is, "How under 
128 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

the doom of suffering we may suffer most 
nobly ; how with such an affliction we may 
best maintain our poise and serenity. One 
of two things is certain : we must be miser- 
able in consequence of deafness or happy in 
spite of it. It is a cross that will crush us 
unless we valiantly stand erect under it. It 
is a cloud that will settle more and more 
densely over us, bereaving us and those 
about us of a needful and rightful joy, unless 
through its folds we can send out from 
ourselves an irradiating smile. By what 
ordering of our conduct can we best keep 
ourselves in the better way ? 

i. There are certain alleviations of our 
burden, immediate and practical, which we 
can lay hold upon. 

(i) The first is negative in its character, 
but not the less real for that. It is a divorce 
from association with this infirmity of an 
unreasoning and harrowing sensitiveness re- 
specting it. We recall that Beethoven could 
not bring himself to say, cc Speak louder ; 
I am deaf;" and multitudes meet this ca- 
lamity with the like shrinking. More than 
9 129 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

this, very many, probably the large majority, 
of those smitten with this infirmity try long 
and hard to conceal it. So they add to 
their misery an anxiety lest others discover 
it which is hardly less tormenting. It would 
seem as though the one burden were hard 
enough, but they take to themselves another 
that presses not less heavily. Nay, I sup- 
pose that many deeply feel, and not unfre- 
quently they openly confess, " I could bear 
this blight, but its exposure I cannot bear." 
They treat it as a disfigurement which they 
must keep from view, and to this end watch 
and strive as anxiously as if their personal 
honor were in jeopardy. Many from the 
discipline of affliction throw off this sen- 
sitiveness at last ; but many carry it all their 
lives, — their greater misery, not their deaf- 
ness, but the consciousness of its publicity. 
Those harrowed and striving thus may well 
be asked to bring before their minds the ques- 
tion, To what advantage is this ? It does 
not make the deafness less ; rather, like any 
other worry or anxiety, I suppose it may 
tend to make it more ; and only for a little 
130 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

while or to a very slight extent can it be kept 
from view. In your very struggle to con- 
ceal it, you only advertise it. In tacitly 
requiring those about you to treat you as 
they treat one another, you make plain to 
them the measure of your loss : while seek- 
ing to meet you as you would have them, 
they gauge your misfortune by the effort 
you exact of them. A trumpet at your ear 
would not more plainly declare deafness than 
do your own looks and bearing in ten min- 
utes of casual conversation with you. You 
flatter yourself for a time that your infirmity 
is not detected, while among those about 
you it is a theme of common remark. Or, 
though conscious that it is known, you think 
that you will thus lessen the impression of 
it, while your course is of all courses the 
best one to convey that impression to the 
fullest. It seems like a self-imposed and 
onerous tax to an end of impossible realiza- 
tion. Nay, worse than this, it seems the 
cultivation of an enfeebling sorrow when 
there is need of a healthy spirit to sustain a 
loss. The wiser course, the wiser as by far 
*3* 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

the easier, is the frank confession, " I beg 
pardon, but I am quite deaf and cannot hear 
you." There is often, indeed, a stage of 
deafness at which it may be made unnotice- 
able by a little care, just as by a little care in 
dress a wart or wen may be kept from view ; 
and in such cases that little care, which may 
be dictated by consideration for others as 
well as for one's self, is not only justifiable 
but beautiful. Of course, too, it always be- 
comes one afflicted with this infirmity to be 
as alert as possible, so that others need not 
be unnecessarily taxed by it. Here is plainly 
application of the Golden Rule, from the 
divine requirement of which the deaf may 
plead no exemption. But beyond these 
very obvious rules of conduct, the effort at 
concealment is both burdensome and vain. 
By all such sensitiveness you are more en- 
cumbered and less happy. It may require a 
considerable effort of will to give this in- 
firmity frank acknowledgment; but once 
done, twice done, thrice done (and, it having 
become an obtrusive and serious fact, the 
earlier the better), a weighty concern drops 
132 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

away, and you take your infirmity into the 
world with you as you take a diminutive 
stature, or irregular features, or gray hair, — 
defects from which you would undoubtedly 
like exemption, but which you regard as a 
part of yourself, and therefore do not chafe 
under. You cease then to be sensitive lest 
others shall know of the handicap which 
you openly avow ; and so are at peace where 
before you were a worried and an anxious 
man. 

This sensitiveness thus faced and over- 
borne, one may then be in an attitude of 
mind in which to avail himself of a very 
practical help in hearing, — I mean the ear- 
trumpet. The use of this does certainly in 
a way advertise deafness ; yet still, friend, 
you are no deafer because you have it, only 
much easier to approach. In declining such 
an aid, it looks as though sensitiveness were 
verging close on foolishness. I was at first 
unwilling to take a trumpet, though mainly 
from suspicion that by relying upon it my 
hearing would be still further impaired. At 
length, however, I took one, and at once found 
i33 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

the way of life so much easier that it became 
perfectly evident to me that it must be help- 
ful to hearing rather than injurious. Indeed 
my aurist told me that that would be the 
natural tendency. Close listening, as all deaf 
men know, is very wearisome, if prolonged ; 
and that aural weariness tends to aggravate 
deafness any aurist will tell you. By the 
aid of a trumpet one may listen longer with 
far less fatigue, and so even if of no potency 
to restore hearing, it is an economy of what 
one has. The sensitiveness against which 
we inveigh, therefore, stands opposed to an 
advantage which we have hardly a right to 
forego. Another comfort I found in it. 
Before I took it, others must make an effort 
to converse with me, which was often a 
source of deep regret to me. With the 
trumpet at my ear their labors were lessened 
and so my happiness promoted. As with 
me, I see not why it should not be with 
others. Take a trumpet, fellow sufferer, 
by all means. 

With this advice, however, I should 
couple a word of caution. Many, having 
i34 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

determined to take a trumpet, will go to a 
shop where aural instruments are sold, and 
try one after another till they come upon the 
one that seems best to suit them. This is 
unwise, for the simple and obvious reason 
that while probably all trumpets are acous- 
tically good, many are aurally bad. They 
help to hear, but they impair the hearing. 
One, too, that might do for another may 
not be well for you. In this matter seek 
the advice of an aurist and abide by his 
counsel. 

It is hard to understand the reluctance of 
great numbers of the deaf, among them men 
and women held capable of wise views of 
conduct, to employ this practical help. It 
advertises the deafness indeed ; a deaf man 
among strangers who did not speak to him 
might not be suspected deaf if a trumpet did 
not declare the fact. Let one speak to him, 
however, and the infirmity would be at once 
apparent. In the circle of one's acquaint- 
ance and as far as his name is spoken this 
affliction is known. How many in the vil- 
lage where I live or in the church where 
i35 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

I worship would suppose me to have good 
hearing did not my trumpet proclaim the 
contrary? Some shrink from the trumpet 
because they do not like the looks of it; 
and that it is not ornamental must be con- 
fessed. However, many other things are 
not ornamental with which we are in daily 
association, and which we cheerfully accept 
for their utility ; and why not the trumpet, 
than which, for the extremely deaf, nothing 
else can be more conducive to comfort and 
convenience? Should it please the powers 
of the universe to cause horns to sprout on 
my forehead, I think I would cheerfully 
accept them if good hearing came with them. 
I do not desire horns ; I very much prefer 
ears ; but I so much desire easy and natural 
communication with my fellows that a mere 
matter of personal appearance seems a trifle 
too small to be considered in the compari- 
son. Harriet Martineau, writing of her 
early experience of deafness, says, u Nine 
tenths of my miseries arose from false 
shame ;" and as she testified, so I suppose 
that multitudes in their recoil from the 
136 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

trumpet, if their ultimate reason were con- 
fessed, would testify. But false shame, in 
dealing with the hard realities of life, wears 
a foolish look. It is something not to be 
deferred to, but resolutely faced and put 
down. What are intelligent natures given 
us for if not for intelligent dealing with our- 
selves ? The standard which we set up for 
a rational being implies that he will coerce 
pride, suppress passion, restrain appetite, 
and act from reason ; and while from the 
consciousness of shortcoming we may look 
upon a measure of departure from this 
standard with extenuation, we are yet mor- 
ally forbidden to look upon it with approval. 
That it is unworthy of an intelligent being 
is the least we can say of it. In our dealing 
with ourselves false pride, like unruly pas- 
sions and unhealthy appetites, is not to be 
conciliated but conquered. And it is worthy 
of remark how much easier is the way of 
life when, pride put by, conditions which we 
cannot welcome are yet openly accepted. 
We have then nothing unreal to maintain, 
and can take without shrinking or even self- 
*37 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

consciousness whatever help shall further us. 
We think with contemptuous pity of those 
who will incur debt, shrink from honorable 
toil, and resort to all manner of crooked 
diplomacies, to maintain a social standard. 
Their case we may admit to be hard, but 
only because they deeply prefer a fictitious 
appearance to a substantial peace, — like so 
many others, — ourselves, fellow sufferers, 
how often! Benjamin F. Butler once made 
a rude remark to Victoria C. Woodhull, then 
hovering on the edge of politics, to which 
she brought a very questionable notoriety. 
cc If you are going into politics, madam, 
I advise you first of all to lose your charac- 
ter. I lost mine many years ago, and have 
been perfectly happy ever since." The pre- 
cise meaning of this remark we will not stop 
to inquire ; I simply draw it to myself at its 
face value, and say that, having no hearing 
to speak of, my happiness is very greatly 
promoted by the suppression within me of 
all pride respecting it. I am thus enabled 
to carry my condition on the surface, and 
employ the one aid it calls for without a 
138 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

qualm. And as with me, fellow sufferers, 
so it may be with you. 

There is another help of a very practical 
nature which I wish also to commend. 
There is a woman of my acquaintance who 
is quite deaf, who yet moves in society with 
grace and freedom. Quite deaf, I say, deaf 
as many who find society scarce tolerable 
because of deafness ; and yet with a group 
of people about her she converses with such 
ease that a stranger would often not suspect 
her to be deaf at all. What is the explana- 
tion ? Why, nothing were easier ; she hears 
with her eyes. That is to say, she makes 
her eyes take the place of ears. In other 
words, she practises lip-reading. The things 
which others say she reads off from their lips 
while they are speaking. 

This is something which many deaf people 
do to some extent. They soon learn that 
by watching lips they catch more easily what 
is said to them, and so learn almost uncon- 
sciously something of lip-movement in word 
formation. That of which they thus gain 
an inkling has been developed into an art, 
!39 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

and is now taught in institutions as system- 
atically as music. There is such an institu- 
tion in Boston, another in Northampton, 
another in Portland, Maine ; and others are 
springing up here and there. So success- 
fully is this art taught that the deaf and 
dumb are qualified to take in the conversa- 
tion of those about them ; they even go to 
church and intelligently follow the minister 
in his sermon, or to the theatre and under- 
stand the play. 1 This art may not be of 
possible acquisition to all. Those of dim 
eyesight, or whose observation is dull, or 
whose faculties have begun to decay, might 
find it beyond them. But probably the 
great majority of the deaf might learn it if 
they were resolutely to undertake it. As to 

i A little time ago, seeking knowledge of this matter, I 
visited one of these institutions, and conversed with the prin- 
cipal. Among other questions which I asked was this : 
" Suppose your better trained pupils transferred to a lecture- 
room at Harvard College, where Professor Royce, say, is lec- 
turing on philosophy, and using such words as a priori 9 
consciousness, phenomena, epistemology, etc., — words ut- 
terly foreign to them, — would they be able to read them 
from his lips ?" The prompt answer was, "They would." 
Severer test could hardly be conceived than this. 
140 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

the length of time required, that, as in learn- 
ing anything else, must depend on aptitude 
and industry. As I am told by one en- 
gaged in teaching this art, a few lessons 
may be taken, and then considerable prog- 
ress made by the steady application of 
them. After that, more lessons as con- 
venience may permit. If, however, one will 
take it comprehensively and thoroughly, 
without intermission until the task is ac- 
complished, a tuition of two years is named 
as the approximately needful one. Think 
of it, man or woman of thirty, with thirty- 
five good years before you ere the twilight 
comes ! Two years for the lad whom re- 
sponsibilities are awaiting ! Two years for 
the girl with all life before her ! Think 
of the increased resource, the broader free- 
dom, the more winning grace, the less 
clouded happiness ; and then ask Duty for 
a judgment as to your conduct respecting it. 
Such an accomplishment within practicable 
reach, the question may seriously be asked 
if one can find moral justification for the 
neglect of it. The time, two years, — you 
141 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

shake your head dubiously at thought of 
that. Four or five years for music we 
willingly grant ; four or five years for foreign 
languages we allow and make no complaint ; 
two years for travel, if the exchequer will 
provide it. But here is something which 
surpasses all these in practical value to such 
as need it. A university degree to the son 
who has good ears is worth far less than this 
accomplishment to the daughter smitten 
with deafness ; and yet two years, — how 
can such a period be spared for it ? It costs 
money also. The institutions of which I 
have spoken are of State provision, and so 
are free to all coming to them from within 
the State. They are designed for the more 
general education of deaf children, and lip- 
reading is resorted to as a means to this 
end. The art, however, is taught by private 
teachers, and they charge fairly for their 
labor. But on what terms do you arrange 
with the teacher of elocution, with the 
French teacher, with the boxing-master, 
with the fencing-master? Of course I say 
nothing of luxuries or personal indulgences. 
142 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

These must be, and only unreasonable moral- 
ists and foolish ministers take reckoning of 
them. I do, however, call attention to the 
tolerant view with which we meet the ex- 
actions of other forms of education, and 
plead that this form be embraced within it. 
It is with a peculiar feeling that I write 
thus. In my preaching days it was not 
unfrequently my own sins that I brought 
to judgment, and now in a retrospective way 
I am doing the same again. This art was 
brought to my notice a quarter of a century 
ago, and, instead of putting forth a resolute 
effort to acquire it, I put it away from me. 
My profession was exacting as to my time, 
and in my spare time — well, I read 
Spinoza. The money consideration, too, 
counted for something, for I was heir to 
poverty and was living on my patrimony. 
I see it now as a means of grace that I 
neglected ; and the thought of what it might 
have meant to me gives fervor to my words 
as I write of it. I offer my example as a 
good one not to imitate. 

There is another help which I feel con- 
H3 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

strained to commend. It is not a means 
that we can lay hold upon, but a self-restraint 
which we may exercise. We have quoted 
the advice of Beethoven's physician that he 
spare his hearing, — advice which any aurist 
would pronounce wise, and which we have 
found reason to justify in the weariness 
which close and prolonged listening is sure 
to occasion. If weariness, however, were 
all the consequence, we might consider it no 
serious matter, for then rest would restore 
us. But attendant upon the fatigue is an 
increase of head noises, and from these, when 
extreme, nervous excitement and mental de- 
pression are almost sure to follow. The 
frugal use of hearing, therefore, is of much 
importance to the deaf, and rules of conduct 
with reference to this should be carefully 
considered. 

We come here to one or two very definite 
relations of the deaf man with his fellows. 
He is often pressed to attend the public 
meeting and may like to do so. Its interest 
— politics, reform, letters — may be his in- 
terest. Pie may even feel it a duty to be 
144 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

there, in order to swell a rank or testify his 
sympathy. This is well enough so far : 
doing things to be seen of men may some- 
times be very commendable. The effort to 
follow debate or address, however, is not 
surely wise. For the little he receives the 
price he pays is too great by far. I say the 
little he receives ; for where the effort to hear 
is great it is scarce possible to understand. 
One may like to go to church, — I do ; it is 
one of the pleasures which I am unwilling 
to deny myself. I have learned the wis- 
dom, however, of taking my minister for 
granted : while he gives his message I pay 
no heed. For me is the worship, the at- 
mosphere, and the fact that the God who 
seeth in secret both heareth and speaketh 
in silence. 

Of course it is seen that the consideration 
that rules my mind is one of practical expe- 
diency : how shall the deaf most easily bear 
the heavy load which it is appointed them 
to carry? The question of their relation 
with society comes before us here: Shall they 
keep in society or hold themselves on the 
10 1 4 5 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

outside of it ? On no point are they more 
likely to be labored with than on this ; any 
tendency which they may manifest to with- 
draw from society is met with the protests of 
friends who see in the isolation only a sacri- 
fice self-incurred. Even Harriet Martineau, 
whose word on this subject should certainly 
have weight, speaks of society as " the first 
thing we are tempted to give up " and the 
" last thing we ought to relinquish." To 
this question, however, I think there are two 
sides. One who is deaf may have duties in 
society ; if so, by all means let him discharge 
them, even though the tax be heavy. But 
as respects the ordinary social functions — 
calls, clubs, balls, receptions — experience 
should be the mentor. If he finds pleasure 
or solace in them, and no unhappy conse- 
quences follow from them, why, by all 
means, let him keep to them. The gain is 
much, and there is no countervailing outlay. 
But if the effort to bear a part be weari- 
some, if the talk and bustle and laughter 
are a distraction and an irritation, if nervous 
exhaustion is a consequence, and, following 
146 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

that, insomnia and mental depression, why, 
to stay away is the part of duty as of prac- 
tical wisdom. It was a saying of Thoreau's 
that he did not care to make a martyr of 
himself unless it was very necessary ; in this 
case one makes a martyr of himself to no 
needful end. The outlay is much, and the 
counterbalancing gain not worth mention- 
ing. His burden is very heavy at the best, 
and he adds not slightly to its weight. It 
seems to me that as a rule a loss that in- 
volves so serious a social incapacity makes a 
good measure of social isolation a condition 
of the healthier and the happier life. Duty, 
too, we may do well to remember, is many- 
sided ; or rather it is a generic term in which 
manifold duties are embraced. So we come 
at last to Goethe's maxim, cc Do the duty 
that lies nearest to thee." That nearest 
duty most likely lies in relation with your 
family, with your business ; and you can 
only discharge it worthily as you meet it 
with serenity. When answering the calls 
of society unfits for nearer obligations, it 
becomes dissipation, not duty. 
H7 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

The conduct thus far commended is con- 
ceived as at the outside of life ; it is practical 
and, barring exceptional cases here and there, 
it is practicable. The sensitiveness by which 
many are so tortured at thought of making 
this infirmity manifest can be shaken off. A 
resolute effort of will, followed by frank even 
though forced confession twice or thrice, and 
it is gone. The trumpet which pride for- 
bids, one may conquer pride and take. The 
lip-reading is not, indeed, for all, nor is it 
accessible to all ; but such as have yet the 
aptitude to acquire it and are within reach 
of it have only themselves to blame if they 
neglect it ; and they are ruled by a very 
questionable economy if they balance dollars 
or days against it. Society seems to lay 
exactions upon us, but we are not necessarily 
its slaves ; and, taking rightful account of 
our infirmity, we may elect our way with 
respect to it. I say may, and, in commend- 
ing all these helps, that is my word ex- 
pressed or implied. Deep in my mind, 
however, there is a should; the appeal to 
obligation, the summons to duty, is none 
148 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

too strong. To bear this infirmity and not 
sink under it, to bear it and at the same 
time be useful men and women, is the 
achievement set before us ; and the helps to 
this which sound reason and experience may 
commend, it may be of our perversity but 
not of our right to put by. The world has 
still a stake in us ; and in the high court of 
morals the judgment must be against us if 
from the neglect of any means of relief we 
defeat its hopes. 

But there is another order of help that 
claims our notice. Into the outer dark- 
ness it is possible to carry an inner light; 
through resources of mind even deafness 
may be comforted. 

There is a contrast which has been often 
before my mind, and of which the sugges- 
tions are manifold. Any one familiar with 
rural life will easily call before his mind a 
farmer who some years ago took up his 
work with a small outfit of knowledge to 
which he has added little, and a stock of 
prejudices which he has intensified. If 
interested in religion, he reads a weekly 
149 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

paper devoted to his sect ; if in politics, an 
organ of his party ; but with the great 
movements of the world he is out of touch. 
Books have no charm for him : so far as he 
is concerned, it would be all the same had 
historians never written and poets never 
sung. In his daily routine he deals with 
the materials of half a dozen sciences, yet 
are they only soil and rocks and animals 
and pests and weeds to him. His forest 
lies fair in the landscape, but it is only wood 
and timber in his eye ; the flowers greet 
him in all his fields, but 

"A primrose by the river's brim 
A yellow primrose is to him, 
And it is nothing more." 

Of course with difference of detail I might 
draw the like picture of men engaged in 
many crafts and callings, — men who meet 
routine of life without any counterpoising 
intellectual interest, and are smothered in it. 
Here now is another picture drawn from the 
life. Travelling once in Southern California, 
I found my way to a ranch in a secluded 
150 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

valley. Secluded we indeed should think 
it in this land of villages and railroads, — 
twenty miles from any centre of trade, with 
a single store, which was also post-office, 
five miles away, visited by a stage every 
other day. There was no church within 
practicable distance ; there were two or 
three neighbors a mile or two away. I met 
the proprietor in his vineyard. His gar- 
ments were of the coarsest, and his features 
were browned with exposure. But his speech 
was accurate, his statements clear ; and at 
once I saw the unmistakable signs of a 
trained intelligence. Within his house, 
very primitive but neat and orderly, his 
centre-table showed him a subscriber for 
three or four periodicals of the higher order, 
also three or four newspapers, representing 
his own State, New England, New York, 
the middle West. His library attracted my 
special interest. Here were Euripides and 
Plato, here were Horace and Tacitus ; here 
were the higher manuals of several sciences ; 
works on philosophy, political economy, 
history, literature, which told of a student 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

of the latter day. It was with a son of 
Harvard that I was dealing. Into this 
isolation he had brought this resource, into 
this loneliness this companionship. As I 
talked with him, I found his mind adjusted 
to the great problems of the day, — philoso- 
phy, theology, trade, finance. He could 
discuss the Negro and the Chinaman, Cleve- 
land and Bismarck and Gladstone, in the 
light of history, of political economy, of 
international polity. His industry was con- 
ducted in the light of science : his soil was 
chemistry, his weeds were botany, his pests 
were entomology, his rocks and the hills 
about him were geology. Into his toil he 
carried the memory of the lecture-room 
where the great problems had been laid 
before him ; in his evenings he could med- 
itate with Plato ; he could beguile any weari- 
ness with the beat of Homer's rhythm. 

The difference between the two may be 
concisely stated thus : while the former is 
below his circumstance, the latter is above 
it. In the one case the man is smothered ; 
in the latter he is supreme. And this dif- 
152 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

ference is implied in the difference in in- 
tellectual resource. The latter was a free 
citizen of the world of ideas, the former was 
restricted to a hermitage. The one would 
be isolated in any throng, the other would 
people any solitude. Give the former all 
Commonwealth Avenue and he would be 
provincial ; doom the latter to the Mohave 
desert and he would still be urban. Very 
likely he welcomed the pressure of a hand 
and loved the sound of voices ; but though 
deprived of these, with the wand of intel- 
ligence he could gather the noble of the 
world around him. To be deprived of the 
contact of men may not be the happiest 
estate, but it is no intolerable fate to one so 
endowed. 

The illustration runs far beyond what is 
for most, yet it bears in upon us a sugges- 
tion of something very desirable and not 
impossible. We cannot prescribe a univer- 
sity degree as a consolation for deafness ; 
but a fresh intellectual interest might very 
often be prescribed, and it should uplift and 
comfort in proportion to its earnestness, 
i53 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

Let me illustrate somewhat discursively. 
You are not in any broad meaning of the 
word educated, and have no definite and ab- 
sorbing intellectual interest ; and this iso- 
lating and depressing infirmity is creeping 
upon you. You cannot cure it, and, taking 
an honest inventory of your resources, you 
are compelled to admit that you have not 
that within you wherewith to console it. 
It happens, however, that you have a hu- 
man fondness for flowers. Suppose you set 
yourself earnestly to the task of learning 
something definite about them. The science 
of botany is not a difficult one ; in a few 
weeks one may find his way into it, though 
all the years of one's life are not enough to 
exhaust it. A few weeks, and the fields and 
the meadows, the hill-top and the brook- 
side are your endless resource. You are a 
man or woman of many tasks ; but having 
earnestly taken up this interest, you may 
find space in the by-play of life to carry it 
forward. In a little time the flowers shall 
greet you with surprises in the field when 
you toil and by your path when you walk. 
*S4 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

And not the flowers only : the grasses in 
their infinite profusion, the weeds in your 
garden, the alders by the brook-side, the 
forest, every tree of which has a tale of 
wonder to tell. They become a healthful 
substitute for the social gossip that is denied 
you, and a diversion from the anxiety that 
oppresses you. Isolated with respect to 
your fellows, you have gained enfranchise- 
ment in a great province of nature. Society 
may hold aloof from you ; here on any 
heath is welcome and smile. I once took 
a walk with Asa Gray in a canon of the 
Santa Ynez Mountains which almost tempted 
me to turn from my own pursuits and em- 
brace his. Our walk was very slow because 
of the wonders which his trained eye saw, 
and which he simply could not pass without 
pausing to contemplate and admire. On 
rocks where I saw nothing at all what mar- 
vellous growths did he discover ! At length 
we came to some rocks that to my eyes 
were as bare as the underpinning of the 
church now building near me. " I do not 
think you will find anything here, pro- 
*55 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

fessor," said I. " I am not so sure of that," 
he replied. cc Let us sit down." We sat 
down on one of the rocks ; and in the three 
feet between us he pointed out sundry 
lichens that were growing there, and lavished 
on me his eloquent account of them. I 
recall this by way of suggesting the wonders 
that are awaiting you, when your eyes are 
opened, on the ledgy hill or in the worn- 
out pasture before your window. 

Or, suppose your stronger drawing to be 
not to botany but to geology. This is per- 
haps a more formidable science ; but a 
course of lectures, the intelligent reading of 
a manual or two, will open its door to you. 
And now the rocks, the hills, the sea-shore, 
the mountain gorges, and the river valleys 
entice you to their stupendous record. Look 
where you will upon nature, your eye can- 
not fall where the wonderful hieroglyphic is 
not inscribed. An open pipe-drain has 
fairy tales to tell ; chalk and coal, gravel 
and peat, things so familiar become as things 
which you have never seen before. Once, 
a pupil of Professor Agassiz, I carried to 
156 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

him a stone which I had picked up by the 
wayside. I wished to ask him a question 
respecting it, but had to struggle with a re- 
luctance to do so, fearing that I should thus 
reveal the nothing that I knew of it. He 
gave me his resistless welcome and pro- 
ceeded to tell me of that stone. For twenty 
minutes his talk went on, — such talk ! such 
talk ! Of course what he told was primer 
to him, for I was in the primary school of 
his science, not safely through the alphabet. 
But Professor Agassiz's primer — what a 
book it was ! I suppose there are stones 
as wonderful in any yard or stone-wall which 
I may pass, that I might pick them up in any 
walk to the post-office if only I had a little 
more of that primer, and that this old town 
whose roadsides and pastures I look on so 
indifferently would be a region of enchant- 
ment to me. 

Or entomology may hold out to you the 
more alluring promise. Embrace it, then, 
embrace it heartily, and after the necessary 
period of preparation, — necessary, I say, 
though not laborious, — the fly and mosquito, 
iS7 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

the moth and beetle, the worm and cater- 
pillar, will enlarge you and enrich you and 
divert you through the revelation of their 
life and function. You demur at this, 
thinking it some great task I would impose. 
Not so. It is not a qualification for a uni- 
versity professorship that I contemplate, 
but a stimulating and healing interest in 
things immediately about you, the way to 
which, if exacting, is not hard. It would 
cost time, you say. Indeed it would ; but 
what did your carriage cost you, what 
did your trip to Niagara cost you, what 
did your accumulations in the savings-bank 
cost you ? It would cost you time, and 
duties are many, and time is a prime con- 
dition of performing them ; but possibly 
not more time than you now spend over 
the commonplace novel or the commonplace 
newspaper, or in moping over the hardness 
of your lot in the infirmity that has come 
upon you. 

But scientific tastes are not yours, you 
say. Your drawing is to man, the creations 
of his heart and brain. Well, then, here is 
158 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

literature, — history with its shining page, 
the novel with its boundless riches, the essay 
with its great enlightenment, biography with 
its heroic record, poetry with its inspiration 
and its joy. Somewhere here is your prov- 
ince ; enter into it, nothing doubting that 
you shall find the consolation you are seek- 
ing. Take with you, however, this most 
friendly caution. Literature is a mine to 
delve in, not a race-course to trot over ; and 
it will bless you almost in proportion to the 
time you earnestly linger over it. I use the 
word "linger" with care, meaning to press 
home if I can its natural suggestion. Tarry 
with an author as you would tarry in a pleas- 
ant country, from simple unwillingness to de- 
tach yourself from his light and joy. There 
is a question which one often hears in literary 
small talk, which from its uniqueness is sug- 
gestive. People will ask you, Have you 
read Ruskin? Have you read Dickens? 
Have you read Macaulay? Have you 
read Tennyson? As their thoughts turn 
towards Concord, however, they speak in 
another tense: Do you read Emerson? 
i59 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

There is a tacit assumption here that you 
treat Emerson as you treat your Bible, ever 
reading him but never done with him ; also 
the assumption that you treat other authors 
much as you treat the towns on an extended 
railway, passing through them and leaving 
them. This is as it should be as respects 
Emerson; I only wish we could confidently 
ask the like question respecting other 
authors : Do you read Longfellow ? Do 
you read Holmes ? Do you read Goldsmith 
or Bacon or Shakespeare or Milton ? Do 
you cleave to a few authors as favorites 
and friends, in quietude of spirit imbibing 
their sunshine ? Thus to do is to find the 
consolation of literature, the thing we are 
now in search for, as it cannot otherwise be 
found. 

There is a very possible and extremely 
useful intensification of this practice. I 
know a man whom fortune has treated with 
great severity. About midway in life he 
became blind. Other infirmity came upon 
him ; for many years he has been helpless 
or nearly so. Happily, however, in earlier 
1 60 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

years he had been a diligent reader of litera- 
ture of the higher order, and had stored his 
memory with quotations from the authors 
whom he loved. As infirmity came upon 
him, friends read to him ; *and so he in- 
creased his store. He must now sit apart, 
but at call what company can he gather 
around him ! He cannot read the news- 
paper, but in place of it he can have Brown- 
ing's song and Emerson's starry wisdom. 
Few are called to experience the measure of 
his physical affliction ; but, thus upheld and 
nourished, rarely will you meet a serener 
soul. Palsied limbs are not to him, blind- 
ness is not to him, when in the "joy of ele- 
vated thought." Here, as it is in part out 
of my own experience that I am trying to 
speak to others, I may dare to say that I am 
telling of a help of which I have proved the 
value. Endowed with a memory that ab- 
sorbs easily, I have gathered from my read- 
ing a store of quotation that is considerable, 
and in more recent years, coming upon 
things that I have especially enjoyed, it has 
been often my practice to linger over them 
ii 161 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

till I can recite them, in preparation for 
emergencies that are sure to come. Some- 
times as I walk, my ears roaring like a vol- 
cano, I can beguile myself from the thought 
of them by the silent recitation of some 
loved poem. In the night, too, when these 
noises will not let me sleep, I can often sol- 
ace the long hours in like manner. Often 
when away from books, the depressing sense 
of infirmity creeping upon me, I can find 
refuge in "Saul" or " Woodnotes " or 
"Tintern Abbey." In church, while the 
minister preaches, my mind is not unlikely 
on the heights of Emerson's or Browning's 
poetry. Some, not fond of church, may 
think this profitable exchange. No, no, no ! 
My minister is no Emerson, as neither was 
Emerson my minister. Thank God for 
Emerson ; but my minister is another man, 
with a message of his own and a heart-throb 
that gives it unction ; and for that brief half 
hour I would gladly give Emerson for him. 
All will agree, however, that as I cannot 
have my minister, Emerson is better than 
nothing. I wish I could hear the sermon, 
162 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

but by thus ordering my conduct I am 
spared the vacuous and listless mind ; and I 
am sure I am not unworthily occupied when 
meditating the great lines of the " Problem " 
or the cc Threnody." A resource that means 
so much to me, it is very pleasant to com- 
mend. 

But there are not a few to whom neither 
science nor letters makes appeal ; their in- 
terests are more distinctly practical. Here, 
then, is your Country or your State with its 
multifarious and complex affairs. Suppose 
you single out some one of these and bring 
to it an active mind. Here is our tariff 
system, for instance : suppose you plunge 
into it with intent to know, really know 
something about it ; taking not the word of 
the party henchman or the party organ, but 
going to the volumes of its sober and un- 
partisan expositors, whence light, not dark- 
ness, comes. Here is a problem of endless 
ramifications, which leads through long 
tracts of history, which brings into contact 
with the noblest intellects, and which has 
important relations not only with our public, 
163 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

but also with our private ethics. Or here 
is our financial system, a region of darkness 
to most of us, which rival demagogues are 
doing their best, or rather worst, to make 
darker. Go behind them to the real 
teachers, with whom you will be in contact 
with real knowledge and honest thought. 
The study may not make you a financier, 
but you may gain from it an awakened and 
enlightened mind. Or here is the complex 
system of our internal revenue ; here is our 
penal system, which brave intellects are 
toiling to reform ; here is our educational 
system, so vast in its scope, so essential to 
our welfare, from its contemplation so illu- 
minating and enlarging and encouraging ; 
here is the problem of capital and labor, the 
immigration problem, the Indian problem, 
the Negro problem. Here are our chari- 
table institutions, — the Golden Rule ap- 
plied ; our natural productions, — coal, iron, 
gold, silver, copper, lead ; our agricultural 
productions, — wheat, corn, cotton, wool ; 
the great inventions that are playing such 
a part in our industrial life, — the steam- 
164 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

engine, the telephone, the telegraph, all 
within reach of the earnest mind, all open- 
ing into rich realms of knowledge, in the 
pursuit of which, fellow sufferer, poor hear- 
ing is no absolute barrier, and in which for 
blissful hours it may be forgotten. Try it 
for a season and you shall surely find that 
an absorbed mind is a comforted infirmity. 
You may complain that the long inventory 
has a superfluous look. For letters, pos- 
sibly so ; but holding in mind the diverse 
interests of those for whom these pages are 
intended, I must think otherwise. I am 
reminded here of an experience of E. H. 
Chapin, who once entered a railway coach 
and took a seat beside a stranger. Dr. 
Chapin was a good talker, accustomed to 
dealing with all varieties of mind, and un- 
dertook to lure his companion into conver- 
sation. One after another he called up the 
topics of common interest, — the weather, 
the scenery, the crops, the politics, the pro- 
ductions of the regions through which they 
were gliding, but to no avail ; the man 
respectfully listened but would not talk. 
165 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

The Doctor did not like to be defeated in a 
province where he was a master, and deter- 
mined to call out the man ; but his wit and 
wisdom elicited no response. At length 
Dr. Chapin must leave the train, and, turn- 
ing to the man, he asked him if he could 
explain why it was they had been unable to 
converse with each other. The man gruffly 
answered, " Why did n't you take hold of 
me on luther? " He was interested in 
leather, and could have talked about that. 
In this enumeration I am trying to come 
to leather, — the leather of your interest, 
that is. 

But you are not one to use books, are 
simply a worker in the world and employed 
upon its ruder tasks, and an intellectual 
interest seems beyond you. There may 
be those not accounted fools who in no 
degree are capable of this, — may be, — I do 
not like to say. Intellectual interest is of 
many ranges, and small intellect may be 
very active in its plane. I once knew a 
boot-maker, a very lowly man, as we 
reckon. I am not certain that he could 
166 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

read and I am quite sure he could not write. 
Of the interests so absorbing to most of 
us, — social arrangements, church, trade, 
education, politics, he knew nothing. Ah, 
yes; let me recall. He did know something 
of politics. He knew the party to which 
he belonged and how always to support 
its ticket, — a good deal if we judge by 
the standards of men accounted wise, — 
ministers, lawyers, men of letters, editors 
and members of Congress, the mighty sum 
of whose vast knowledge comes to pre- 
cisely this. 

His one dominating interest, however, 
was his trade, and he had a genuine ambi- 
tion to perfect himself in that. To make 
a boot of neatest fit and trimmest shape 
and stoutest build was the aim of his ambi- 
tion, and so a matter of serious study with 
him. He had a theory of edges, a doctrine 
of shanks, a philosophy of heels, and these 
he was constantly meditating and unfolding. 
Not only skill in handicraft engrossed him, 
but the materials used in it, as in finishing 
and treeing, kinds of leather and methods 
167 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

i i ■ — 

of tanning, came as weighty matters before 
him, and he seriously and thoughtfully con- 
sidered them. It seems a small interest, but 
his untutored mind found scope in it. In 
his little sphere he was an artist and felt him- 
self such ; and to talk an hour with him 
was to carry away an enlarged sense of the 
scope of knowledge that the study of a pair 
of boots may lead to, and of the artistic 
delight that might be realized in fashioning 
them. This man was poor and he was not 
well, but in boot-lore he found consolation. 
With mind seriously occupied with that one 
interest, small as it was, his lowly station 
and his slender purse and his physical frailty 
could not overpower him. By virtue of 
that interest he lived apart from them and 
above them. 

You have only a small piece of land to 
cultivate. You have not scope then for 
the large enterprises of a California ranch ; 
and you have opportunity to become the 
merest clod, if you will. But there is surely 
opportunity there to be something else. To 
cultivate that soil, not mechanically but 
168 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

wisely, to search out the best methods of 
dealing with it so as to realize the largest 
return from it, is not a matter of hands 
alone ; a brain must be exercised, and that 
earnestly. A number of sciences come to- 
gether there ; and though you may never 
know them as the books unfold them, all 
your success depends upon the wisdom of 
your practical dealing with them. If you 
cultivate this piece of land as an irksome 
makeshift for your daily bread, using only 
hands trained to do as other hands have 
done, — are one animal as your horse is 
another, — why, you may get bread, but 
surely little more. But if you will bring 
to your labors an active mind, seeking 
through them not merely bread but wis- 
dom also, are eager not merely to cultivate 
your field but to know it too, here is scope 
for an intellectual satisfaction which the 
period of a human life cannot exhaust. As 
you toil on, your ringing ears may be for- 
gotten, and though oft baffled you may be 
comforted. 

You are a woman with just a home to 
169 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

care for, and that a small and poor one ; the 
wife of a man of toil who brings home little 
money and much fatigue and too much 
impatience. Society is not for you, and in 
the use of books you are untrained. Within 
these four walls and in close contact with 
them you must find whatever satisfaction 
there is for you; and here is the torment 
of this infirmity. I cannot say that your 
outlook is a cheerful one, but I will say it is 
not a hopeless one. At any rate, here is 
opportunity for a brave endeavor which 
may help you even in the putting forth. 
If you allow yourself to be merely a domes- 
tic drudge, there is indeed little hope for 
you : your physical ill will have no counter- 
poise in that wearying service ; in that routine 
of cooking and washing and mending you 
may have the satisfaction that results from 
being simply busy, but no other. But if in 
that home you will be not merely the servant 
of its work but the financier of its small 
expenditures, the genius of its plain comfort, 
and the artist of its inexpensive beauty, a 
higher order of satisfaction is for you. You 
170 



Helps and Consolations of Deafness 

will call into exercise thought and taste, 
which while you put them forth react upon 
you with comfort and cheer. You will be 
held to an ideal in the charm of which the 
poorness of your estate must less oppress 
you. It is a narrow sphere, yet in it there 
is scope for high aim and brave endeavor, 
and these shall bless you. 

This order of help, of course all see, is 
not for the deaf alone ; it is a prescription 
for humanity in many estates of suffering 
and loss. Poverty must often be; infirm- 
ity is the lot of man. A refuge from either is 
a mind well occupied. In physical affliction 
to turn to the marvels of any science, to 
experience the delights of any literature, to 
become absorbed in the pursuit of knowl- 
edge, or in high thought, or in noble aim, 
is like escape from the heat and bustle and 
repression of a city to the fields of June 
with their verdure and their flowers. The 
poor condition abides, but it pertains only 
to a part of us, and that the least important 
one. If our bodies are in prison, our spirits 
171 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

are free. The infirmity does not go, but 
there are sunshine and fresh air and pleasant 
sceneries and sweet odors. Such refuge, 
baffled and tormented, why will we neglect ? 
And yet it is not all. 



172 



VIII 
HIGHER CONSOLATIONS 



173 



VIII 

Higher Consolations 

IN the forecast of this little volume the 
last chapter was to have been the con- 
cluding one. A preacher, however, cannot 
easily throw off the wont of his vocation ; 
and, in writing the last few pages, it was 
borne in upon me that I needed to carry 
my reflections to a yet higher altitude. We 
have seen how to counterpoise deafness ; our 
study now is to transcend it. 

My thought turns to those nobler senti- 
ments through the cultivation of which we 
attain our fairer heights. First of all, I 
bring question as to yourself, — What are 
you ? You answer, I am a man ? Are you 
that ? Then, in contemplation of your na- 
ture as such, I have a word with you. 

You do not always think it, but in affirm- 
ing that you are a man you differentiate 
i7S 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

yourself from all other natures. There 
may be angels, — you separate yourself 
from them ; there are animals, — you say 
by implication that you are other than they. 
And according to your nature is your appro- 
priate conduct. Only a man, there is not 
expected of you the inconceivable graces of 
celestial intelligences; being a man, you only 
act as befits you when you are true to the 
manly nature as distinguished from that of 
the animals about you. You think no less 
of the dog because he is quarrelsome, nor of 
the fox because he steals, nor of the swine 
for its predilection for the mire, nor of the 
snake because it strikes unseen ; but when a 
man takes on doggish or foxy or swinish or 
snakish habits, you recognize that he has 
compromised his estate. The lower part 
degrades him because only a higher part 
befits him. In comparison with the animals 
he is king, and in taking on their attributes 
he exchanges his royal robe for the fool's 
cap and bells. And it will add a little em- 
phasis to our thought to say that, while 
nothing is easier than to act beneath the 
176 



Higher Consolations 



manly nature, there is no possibility of carry- 
ing conduct to ranges above it. The greed 
of which we see so much is far too low for 
us, but no self-sacrifice is too high. While 
in the downward tendency, — in avarice, in 
cruelty, in cowardice, in treachery, — ■ we see 
men assimilating inferior natures, at no 
height of excellence do they leave the manly 
nature behind them and assimilate superior 
ones. At the noblest possible they are still 
men, triumphant men. When Winkelried 
"made way for liberty and died" at Sem- 
pach, his conduct was sublime, but not super- 
manly. When Sir Philip Sidney, wounded 
and dying at Flushing, handed the flagon of 
water that had been brought him to a soldier 
who was dying near him, in recognition of 
his greater need, manliness was illustrated, 
not outdone. When Luther flung defiance 
to Church and Emperor at Worms, there 
was simply a man sublimely faithful to him- 
self. And so we ever feel in the presence 
of high example. All martyr-crowns are 
crowns of triumphant manliness. 

There is food here for high reflection. 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

At the summits of character man is most 
truly himself. However humble his station, 
his birthright is a royal dignity. There is 
no grace he can conceive which he may not 
fittingly put on. Now, while few things are 
more pitiful than the ostentatious assertion 
of outward importance, there is nothing 
more healthful than a high sense of the 
worth of the interior man. The former is 
an enfeebling vanity ; the latter is an en- 
nobling self-appreciation. Of the latter, 
indeed, comes our conception of honor. 
We often use the word superficially to give 
account of what is hardly more than a caprice 
of conduct ; but, deeply studied, it is found 
to express a sense of what is worthy of a 
man. The scale of honor is of course a 
very variable one, exacting all refinements 
of conduct in the high man, tolerating much 
that is unlovely in the low man ; but ever 
reflecting the individual's conception of what 
is befitting his nature. The man of honor 
may be a very imperfect man ; he may have 
dimness of vision, faults of temper, infirmi- 
ties of will ; but according to the light and 
178 



Higher Consolations 



capacity given him he must be true to his 
dignity as a man. Conduct that in his eyes 
demeans him, which he perceives to be weak, 
crafty, cowardly, cruel, unchivalrous, or un- 
clean, he must fight all temptations to in- 
dulge. These things, he will say in effect, 
may do for brutes or brutish men, but from 
my height I may not stoop to them. This 
standard of judgment was fundamental in 
that stoicism from which so many examples 
of illustrious virtue have come to us. Be- 
yond a doubt the Stoic often laid his em- 
phasis wrongly ; he had not the Christian 
lesson and the Christian's exemplar for his 
guidance. His virtues were of the mascu- 
line type ; his model the hero, not the saint ; 
the conqueror, not the martyr. Central in 
his creed, however, and vital to his working 
ideal, was the conception of a self-poised and 
regnant spirit. Human life must ever have 
the experience of vicissitude : success and 
failure, gain and loss, health and pain must 
be its portion. The man, however, in the 
dignity of his nature should be superior to 
vicissitude, no joy intoxicating, no tempta- 
179 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

tion seducing, no loss or grief overpowering. 
His judgments were especially severe upon 
surrenders before danger or grief or suffer- 
ing. Fortitude, as he held, became a man ; 
feebleness or pusillanimity in any form was 
his defeat and dishonor. This feature of his 
standard is brought into strong relief in the 
passage in which Cassius utters his contempt 
for Caesar. 

" Once, upon a raw and gusty day 
The troubled Tyber chafing with her shores, 
Caesar said to me, ' Dar'st thou, Cassius, now 
Leap in with me into this angry flood, 
And swim to yonder point ? ' Upon the word, 
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in, 
And bade him follow : so, indeed, he did. 
The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it 
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside 
And stemming it with hearts of controversy : 
But, ere we could arrive the point propos'd, 
Caesar cried, c Help me, Cassius, or I sink! ' 

He had a fever when he was in Spain, 
And when the fit was on him I did mark 
How he did shake : 't is true, this god did shake ; 
His coward lips did from their colour fly ; 
And that same eye, whose bend doth awe the world 
Did lose his lustre. I did hear him groan : 
1 80 



Higher Consolations 



Ay, and that tongue of his, that bade the Romans 
Mark him and write his speeches in their books, 
' Alas ! ' it cried, ' give me some drink, Titinius,' 
As a sick girl." 

We with sentiments meliorated by Chris- 
tian culture would treat these exigencies much 
less ironically, not unlikely with a manifest 
charity. Yet we can so far enter into the 
Stoic's mind as to understand his contempt 
for a frightened or a whining Caesar. Nay 
more, we may make a whining Caesar an ex- 
pansive formula for what we should not be. 
Possibly, if we meditate it well, it will distil 
upon our minds a saving sense of the truth 
that by the whining, Caesar is un-Caesared. 

Though often enough rehearsed, it may 
not be amiss to note here some of the ele- 
ments of man's distinction. A deer at the 
scent of danger has no alternative but flight ; 
to take survey of his situation with calm 
estimate of his perils and his resources is 
not given him. It is, however, given man. 
Through the intellect with which he is en- 
dowed he can in danger take reckoning of 
his strength ; in loss, of the resources that 
181 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

are left him ; in suffering, of the happiness 
that yet remains and of the alleviations that 
are possible. And to disown this high en- 
dowment in the extremities of life, to yield 
in loss or suffering to an enervating dread 
or a paralyzing anxiety, is to go the way of 
the timid and unreasoning animal. This is 
the essence of cowardice, I suppose, — very 
pardonable in a deer, but never pardoned in 
a man ; and the degradation it implies is 
witness to the high prerogative it disowns. 
An ailing dog is apt to be a cross one, and a 
surly snarl and a show of teeth his greeting 
when you approach him. You cheerfully 
forgive him ; for since he is a dog he can do 
no otherwise than let his misery rule him. 
Man, however, has a moral sense; and this, 
not doggishness, is supposed to be his men- 
tor. Conscience is not for prosperity and 
good health and fair weather only ; and when, 
turning from its behests, we needlessly fling 
our suffering upon others, — by our touchi- 
ness impair their peace, and by our dark- 
ness cloud their light, we abjure our estate 
as men. A lion, smitten with infirmity, can 
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Higher Consolations 



only seek his lair, yielding to an instinct 
which he has no resource to combat. 
Through the endowment of will, however, 
such resource is given man. In loss, pain, 
grief, it is possible for him to stand erect 
and fight on. If Fate is cruel, he may still 
defy it. And the examples we most delight 
to contemplate are those of the suffering yet 
steadfast. 

These endowments — intellect, conscience, 
will — lift man to his august pre-eminence. 
As he rules himself by them, and only thus, 
is his dignity secure. 

Now there is something in the conscious- 
ness of high estate to withhold one from the 
weak surrenders. You are not without a 
protection from doggishness if you vividly 
realize that by it your manhood is compro- 
mised. As you think meanly of yourself, 
you are nearer to the level of the ills of life ; 
if you carry with you the consciousness that 
you are king, your conduct will be kingly. 
Let some clod be afflicted with rheumatism 
and he will be the valetudinarian whom 
Emerson would take care never to un- 
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Deafness and Cheerfulness 

muzzle. Let the same affliction come to a 
Marcus Antoninus and he will treat it as 
pertaining only to his lower nature, and, 
ruled ever by his higher, go his way without 
mentioning it. He may not be able to walk 
as rapidly or mount his horse as easily, but 
thus the malady will prove only a hindrance 
which he can bear with equanimity. It may 
put a torturing fetter on his limbs, but his 
spirit will be free. 

The application of these reflections to the 
experience which we are considering is not 
far to seek. Deafness is a serious matter, 
but, fellow sufferer, the extent to which it 
will demoralize will depend very largely on 
the moral altitude at which you hold your- 
self. If your practical and working concep- 
tion of your nature is mean, if you conceive 
yourself but a paragon of animals and not 
a little lower than the angels, you will be 
almost sure to live in a vivid and oppres- 
sive consciousness of disability ; you will 
feel yourself "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," 
your moral energies will be feeble, and 
you will become morbid and morose and 
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Higher Consolations 



irritable. But if you will lift yourself to 
the heights of a man, a being of intellect 
and conscience and will, who is expected 
to meet Fate and defy it, and only in heroic 
virtue acts his part, it may be otherwise 
with you. Though handicapped by your 
affliction, you will yet live above it ; though 
you still must suffer, you will suffer with 
dignity. It is indeed a heavy load that 
you are called to carry, but it does not 
seem to me one to which manly shoulders 
should be unequal. To falter under it has 
a look of ignominy ; to chafe and fret and 
grow morbid because of it argues a low 
ideal and a feeble will. Take to yourself 
the heroism which you honor, and in your 
own hard exigency be hero. It is a great 
affliction ; but, until all energies are ex- 
hausted in the conflict, it seems to me too 
small to overturn a resolutely defiant man. 

Is it asked how one can hold himself 
up to this altitude ? Certainly I know no 
royal way and can conceive none. First 
take home the truth that it is the only al- 
titude that befits you, and then simply hold 



Deafness and Cheerfulness 

fast. Vividly conceive the dignities that as a 
manly nature belong to you, and they shall 
nerve you to the valorous fight for them. 

To reinforce you in this endeavor there 
are certain inspiring assurances which you 
are permitted to take home, and which 
sane reasoning cannot deny you. Your 
suffering is great, but the proofs of man- 
hood are not more in the things we do 
than in the burdens that we carry. You 
would fain be useful, but are cut off from 
achievement ; take thought that none better 
serve than they who suffer well. 

And now, in parting, one further ques- 
tion : Tell me, pray, what is your faith ? " I 
believe in God," you answer. Stop there ; 
other details of your faith might be inter- 
esting, but enough for now this supreme 
confession. Even as to the form of this 
belief we will make no close inquiry. We 
will only assume that God is not another 
name for Fate, but calls before your mind 
a Wisdom, a Righteousness, and a Love, 
enchanting the universe and in immediate 
contact with you and all. 
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Higher Consolations 



This faith you affirm with a confidence 
that does not hesitate, and not unlikely you 
would repudiate with warmth the sugges- 
tion that it is not vital to your soul. For- 
get then for a moment that it is on trial, 
and turn to the world and maintain it there. 
Your deafness is a serious matter to you ; 
it would be that, even though you met it 
with the most reasonable mind. But the 
probability is that you do not thus meet 
it; that you construe the world from it; 
that there is a "melancholy gray" wherever 
you look because of it. It seems a small 
datum from which to judge the administra- 
tion of such large affairs ; and you, meeting 
another with a different infirmity in like 
attitude of mind, would so reason with him. 
It is not, however, the size of our infirmi- 
ties, but their nearness, that here signifies. 
A very trifling object brought close to the 
eye will shut out the sun ; and your chaf- 
ing and wailing make manifest the fact that 
your infirmity obscures your God. 

Our pathologies are so engrossing to us 
that it is often difficult not to feel that the 
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Deafness and Cheerfulness 

universe should be judged by them. Hard 
universe, hard and cruel, that permits these 
rheumatic aches and dyspeptic miseries and 
palsied limbs and disordered livers and deaf 
ears and sightless eyes. Yes, it seems so 
when, as through a glass darkly, we look at 
the universe directly through them. But 
change the point of view ; lift yourself to a 
higher altitude, and look at human sufferings 
as through the eye of Heaven. The law of 
the Lord is perfect, says the Psalmist ; look- 
ing upon the world from this higher altitude, 
though with all the ills of flesh and spirit in 
our view, could we not quote him with ap- 
proval ? These ills follow upon laws that 
cannot be made angry and that cannot be 
appeased, which execute their commission 
with no cruelty and also with no pity. 
Their absolute indifference — as we to them, 
so ever they to us — there is no denying ; 
and so to some of ardent sensibilities they 
seem fatelike and remorseless. But here is 
another aspect of them : the griefs they en- 
tail, rightly considered, are witness to their 
perfection. The fact that we are always 
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Higher Consolations 



made miserable by the breaking of them is 
their negative way of showing that in the 
keeping of them there is blessing. Out of 
the light must be into the dark ; out of the 
warmth must be into the cold : the issues 
of obedience and of disobedience simply 
must be alternative, nor as rational beings 
would we have them otherwise. " All is 
well," says an American preacher, " for if 
there is anything that is not well, it is well 
that it is not well." It is well that violation 
of law should not be well ; what hope for 
the world if it were well or could come to 
well ? Sometimes, starting from my infirm- 
ity, I have as a problem of thought tried to 
fashion a world in which it could have no 
place, and I never yet got far without dis- 
covering that it would be a poor affair. 
There may be in space some planet on which 
one born as I was born, environed as I have 
been environed, and living as I have lived, 
might not be deaf. If so, I would not take 
it in exchange for this one. I love not my 
infirmity ; but a world in which, its condi- 
tion being provided, it must follow, would 
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Deafness and Cheerfulness 

surely be the world of my choosing. This 
unrelenting sequence of cause and effect in- 
volves serious experiences, but in it is pro- 
vision for our larger and fairer welfare. 

There is a story by which Leibnitz illus- 
trates his optimism. The oracle has made 
known to Sextus Tarquinius that for the 
wrongs he shall do he will be driven forth 
in poverty and exile. Theodorus, a priest 
of the temple, asks of Jupiter that he ex- 
plain to him the hard fate of Sextus : why 
a different will, which should conduct him 
through other paths to a different issue, has 
not been given him. In a vision he is taken 
in hand by Minerva, who shows him the 
plan of several possible worlds. In one is 
Sextus rich and happy and honored, yet, as 
he surveys it, it does not suit him. He is 
shown another in which is Sextus great and 
powerful, yet he turns from it dissatisfied. 
Finally he is shown one that fills him with 
delight ; and is then told that it is the plan 
of the very world in which he lives, which 
cannot be without its Sextus. 

Deafness, fellow sufferers, is our Sextus; 
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Higher Consolations 



and it is for us to see that the world would 
not be so fair without the possibilities of 
him. 

It is a heavy burden that is laid upon us ; 
it is for us to bear it with serenity, if we can. 
This, however, we can rarely do through 
energy of will alone ; we need to have our 
minds diverted from it by healthful interests, 
and our spirits poised above it. A way to 
both is open, — not a way, indeed, that does 
not imply effort on our part, yet a way that 
is clear and inviting. The world of human 
interests is before us; the heights of char- 
acter, our nobler appreciations, a reconciling 
philosophy are wooing us. Let us not be 
disheartened, let us not surrender ; but 
through buffet and suffering fight on and on. 
But that we may fight the more valor- 
ously, let us stand firm in our manhood 
and hold fast to our God. 



THE END 



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